Twain, Mark (Mark Twain)

Often, the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.
-- Mark Twain

The average man is what his environment and his superstitions have made him; and their function is to make him an ass.

-- Mark Twain

The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession, what there is of it.

-- Mark Twain

Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.

-- Mark Twain

Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute.

-- Mark Twain

A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
-- Mark Twain

Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.

-- Mark Twain

Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old second hand diamonds than none at all.
-- Mark Twain

I wonder how much it would take to buy a soap bubble, if there was only one in the world.

-- Mark Twain

Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest.
-- Mark Twain

Do I seem to be preaching? It is out of my line: I only do it because the rest of the clergy seem to be on vacation.
-- Mark Twain

Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.

-- Mark Twain

Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world - and never will.
-- Mark Twain

It is a good thing, perhaps, to write for the amusement of the public, but it is far higher and nobler thing to write for their instruction, their profit, their actual and tangible benefit.

-- Mark Twain

Honor is a harder master than law.

-- Mark Twain

That's the difference between governments and individuals. Governments don't care, individuals do.

-- Mark Twain

No public interest is anything other or nobler than a massed accumulation of private interests.
-- Mark Twain

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect.
-- Mark Twain

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
-- Mark Twain

History does not repeat itself, It rhymes.
-- Mark Twain

There are no dialogues, only intersecting monologues.
-- Mark Twain

Only presidents, editors and people with tapeworm have the right to use the editorial 'we'.
-- Mark Twain

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.
-- Mark Twain

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it
-- Mark Twain

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
-- Mark Twain

The rule is perfect: In all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.
-- Mark Twain

The way it is now, the asylums can hold all the sane people but if we tried to shut up the insane we should run out of building materials.
-- Mark Twain

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.
-- Mark Twain

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
-- Mark Twain

Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.

-- Mark Twain

Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may.
-- Mark Twain

The difference between the almost-right word and the right word is...the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.
-- Mark Twain

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
-- Mark Twain

The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
-- Mark Twain

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.

-- Mark Twain

Education that consists in learning things and not the meaning of them is feeding upon the husks and not the corn.
-- Mark Twain

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is really a large matter- it's the difference between lightning bug and the lightning.
-- Mark Twain

Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.
-- Mark Twain

My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death.
-- Mark Twain

Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out
-- Mark Twain

He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it - namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain.
-- Mark Twain

The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.
-- Mark Twain

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities, truth isn't .
-- Mark Twain

The truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.
-- Mark Twain

The rule is perfect; in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.
-- Mark Twain

Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
-- Mark Twain

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.
-- Mark Twain

Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.
-- Mark Twain

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.
-- Mark Twain

In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination.
-- Mark Twain

There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable, drinkable and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it. How strange it is. It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry.
-- Mark Twain

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.
-- Mark Twain

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
-- Mark Twain

Do something every day that you don't want to do; this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.
-- Mark Twain

Be always careful not to take too much from an experience. A cat, having sat upon a hot stove lid, will never again sit upon a hot stove lid. Nor upon a cold stove lid.
-- Mark Twain

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
-- Mark Twain

There are no dialogues, only intersecting monologues
-- Mark Twain

The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.
-- Mark Twain

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it.
-- Mark Twain

The loud little handful will shout for war. The pulpit will warily and cautiously protest at first
-- Mark Twain

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
-- Mark Twain

You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
-- Mark Twain

Often it does seem a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.
-- Mark Twain

Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessaries.
-- Mark Twain

[The author] does not make the mistake of being relevant on one page and irrelevant on another; he is irrelevant on all of them.

-- Mark Twain

The author... this good soul, whose intentions are always better than his English.

-- Mark Twain

It seems to me that just in the ratio that our newspapers increase, our morals decay. The more newspapers, the worse morals.
-- Mark Twain

He would come in and say he had changed his mind - which was a gilded form of speech, because he hadn't any...
-- Mark Twain

One mustn't criticize people on grounds where he can't stand perpendicular himself.

-- Mark Twain

It is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition. There was once a man who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal, complained that there were too many prehistoric toads in it.

-- Mark Twain

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.

-- Mark Twain

Nothing so needs reforming as other people's bad habits.

-- Mark Twain

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. That is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
-- Mark Twain