quote · Legacy record
Think of the old cliché about “the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.” This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in the head. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.
Think of the old cliché about “the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.” This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in the head. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.
Approximate author period: c. 1985 AD · modern
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- Author or tradition
- David Foster Wallace
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
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- Approximate author period: c. 1985 AD · modern
Approximate author-period anchor from life dates 1962 to 2008; Wikidata Q313246, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q313246 (accessed 2026-10-08). Not a quotation composition date.
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Supplied reference C; CSV row 216353; supplied attribution, independently unverified
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