The Lowest Animal

On Women

2007-09-18T21:56:00.001-07:00

There is nothing comparable to the endurance of a woman. In military life she would tire out an army of men, either in camp or on the march.
- Mark Twain's Autobiography

On Values

2007-09-18T21:55:00.000-07:00

Moralizing, I observed, then, that "all that glitters is not gold." Mr. Ballou said I could go further than that, and lay it up among my treasures of knowledge, that nothing that glitters is gold. So I learned then, once for all, that gold in its native state is but dull, unornamental stuff, and that only lowborn metals excite the admiration of the ignorant with an ostentatious glitter. However, like the rest of the world, I still go on underrating men of gold and glorifying men of mica. Commonplace human nature cannot rise above that.
- Roughing It

On Truth

2007-09-18T21:54:00.002-07:00

No real gentleman will tell the naked truth in the presence of ladies.
- "A Double-Barreled Detective Story"

Familiarity breeds contempt. How accurate that is. The reason we hold truth in such respect is because we have so little opportunity to get familiar with it.
- Notebook, 1898

If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.
- Notebook, 1894

On Prejudice

2007-09-18T21:54:00.001-07:00

I have no race prejudices, and I think I have no color prejudices or caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. Indeed I know it. I can stand any society. All that I care to know is that a man is a human being--that is enough for me; he can't be any worse.
- "Concerning the Jews"

On Preaching

2007-09-18T21:52:00.000-07:00

The art of preaching is to influence you. From the pulpit and from the mouths of all of you the preaching goes on all the time. Our words and acts are not for ourselves but for others. They are like the tidal waves of the seas that encircle the earth. They are heard about us when they are uttered. We are preaching all the time, even if we do not know it. We forget that we carry influence. We ought to remember it, however, and make it a constant reminder. We had better see that our conduct is of a favorable nature.

See that your preaching, when alive, be of the character that, when you are dead, others may reap the secondary effort of what you did. Let it be good, not bad. Preaching, when dead, is not lost. Washington died over 100 years ago, but he still preaches. His character, service, and words still live. Every day nations striving for liberty fully appreciate what he did. Words sometimes perish, but conduct is lasting.
- Mark Twain's First Sermon

On Politics

2007-09-18T21:51:00.000-07:00

The political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely food for laughter, they are an entire banquet.
- Mark Twain in Eruption

An honest man in politics shines more there than he would elsewhere.
- A Tramp Abroad

Yes, you are right--I am a moralist in disguise; it gets me into heaps of trouble when I go thrashing around in political questions.
- Letter to Helene Picard,
Feb. 22, 1902

History has tried hard to teach us that we can't have good government under politicians. Now, to go and stick one at the very head of the government couldn't be wise.
- New York Herald, 8/26/1876

On Piracy

2007-09-18T21:50:00.000-07:00

It was a respectable trade, then, and monarchs were partners in it. In my time I have had desires to be a pirate myself.
- Mark Twain's Autobiography, chapter published in the North American Review, Sept. 1907

On Philosophy

2007-09-18T21:49:00.000-07:00

Every man is in his own person the whole human race without a detail lacking....I knew I should not find in any philosophy a single thought which had not passed through my own head, nor a single thought which had not passed through the heads of millions and millions of men before I was born.
- Mark Twain in Eruption

On Progress

2007-09-18T21:48:00.002-07:00

The so-called Christian nations are the most enlightened and progressive...but in spite of their religion, not because of it. The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetic in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve. And every step in astronomy and geology ever taken has been opposed by bigotry and superstition. The Greeks surpassed us in artistic culture and in architecture five hundred years before Christian religion was born.
- Mark Twain, a Biography

Every little bit counts. We are very glad to have it, thin as the slice may be.
- letter to Charles Dillingham, 8/22/1902 (Karanovich collection)

Isn't it odd that we should take a spasm, every now and then, and go spinning back into the dark ages once more, after having put in a world of time and money and work toiling up into the high lights of modern progress?

- Letter to Hartford Courant, 11/22/1879

On Opportunity

2007-09-18T21:48:00.001-07:00

I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.
- Mark Twain's Autobiography

On Nations

2007-09-18T21:47:00.000-07:00

Nations do not think, they only feel. They get their feelings at second hand through their temperaments, not their brains.
- "What is Man?"

On Money

2007-09-18T21:46:00.002-07:00

The lack of money is the root of all evil.
- More Maxims of Mark, Johnson, 1927

Some men worship rank, some worship heroes, some worship power, some worship God, & over these ideals they dispute & cannot unite--but they all worship money.
- Mark Twain's Notebook

On Leadership

2007-09-18T21:46:00.001-07:00

A statesman gains little by the arbitrary exercise of ironclad authority upon all occasions that offer, for this wounds the just pride of his subordinates, and thus tends to undermine his strength. A little concession, now and then, where it can do no harm is the wiser policy.
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

On Killing

2007-09-18T21:01:00.001-07:00

The joy of killing! the joy of seeing killing done--these are traits of the human race at large. We white people are merely modified Thugs; Thugs fretting under the restraints of a not very thick skin of civilization; Thugs who long ago enjoyed the slaughter of the Roman arena, and later the burning of doubtful Christians by authentic Christians in the public squares, and who now, with the Thugs of Spain and Nimes, flock to enjoy the blood and misery of the bull-ring. We have no tourists of either sex or any religion who are able to resist the delights of the bull-ring when opportunity offers; and we are gentle Thugs in the hunting-season, and love to chase a tame rabbit and kill it. Still, we have made some progress--microscopic, and in truth scarcely worth mentioning, and certainly nothing to be proud of--still it is progress: we no longer take pleasure in slaughtering or burning helpless men. We have reached a little altitude where we may look down upon the Indian Thugs with a complacent shudder; and we may even hope for a day, many centuries hence, when our posterity will look down upon us in the same way.
- Following the Equator

On Irreverence

2007-09-18T20:58:00.000-07:00

When a thing is sacred to me it is impossible for me to be irreverent toward it. I cannot call to mind a single instance where I have ever been irreverent, except toward the things which were sacred to other people.
- "Is Shakespeare Dead?"

Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure defense.
- Notebook, 1888

On Ingratitude

2007-09-18T20:56:00.000-07:00

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
- Pudd'nhead Wilson

On Humanity

2007-09-18T20:54:00.002-07:00

It is governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities. It suppresses its feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise. Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong, but no matter, the crowd follows it.
- The Mysterious Stranger

On Hope

2007-09-18T20:54:00.001-07:00

It is like any other agriculture: if you hoe it and harrow it and water it enough, you can make three blades of it grow where none grew before. If you've got nothing to plant, the process is slow and difficult, but if you've got a seed of some kind or other--any kind will answer--you get along a good deal faster.
- "Three Thousand Years Among the Microbes"

On Government

2007-09-18T20:52:00.000-07:00

...nations have no command over their governments, & in fact no influence over them, except of a fleeting & rather ineffectual sort.
- Letter to Baroness von Suttner, 2/17/1898

The government of my country snubs honest simplicity, but fondles artistic villainy, and I think I might have developed into a very capable pickpocket if I had remained in the public service a year or two.
- Roughing It

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

...no country can be well governed unless its citizens as a body keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians of the law and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more.
- The Gilded Age

On God

2007-09-18T20:50:00.000-07:00

If God is what people say there can be no one in the universe so unhappy as He; for He sees unceasingly myriads of His creatures suffering unspeakable miseries--and besides this foresees how they are going to suffer during the remainder of their lives. One might as well say, "As unhappy as God."
- Notebook #24, April - Aug. 1885

...the swindle of life and the treachery of a God that can create disease and misery and crime--create things that men would be condemned for creating--that men would be ashamed to create.
- quoted in Isabel Lyon's Journal, 2/2/1906

God pours out love upon all with a lavish hand--but He reserves vengeance for His very own.
- Mark Twain's Notebook

To trust the God of the Bible is to trust an irascible, vindictive, fierce and ever fickle and changeful master...
- Mark Twain, a Biography

On Genius

2007-09-18T20:49:00.000-07:00

Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered--either by themselves or by others.
- Autobiography of Mark Twain

It is impossible that a genius--at least a literary genius--can ever be discovered by his intimates; they are so close to him that he is out of focus to them and they can't get at his proportions; they can't perceive that there is any considerable difference between his bulk and their own.
- Autobiography of Mark Twain, (reference to Jim Gillis)

On Freedom of the Press

2007-09-18T20:48:00.000-07:00

...the liberty of the Press is called the Palladium of Freedom, which means, in these days, the liberty of being deceived, swindled, and humbugged by the Press and paying hugely for the deception.
- "From Author's Sketch Book, Nov. 1870," reprinted in The Twainian, May 1940

On Freedom of Speech

2007-09-18T20:46:00.000-07:00

...in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either.
- Following the Equator, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar

On Fools

2007-09-18T20:44:00.000-07:00

Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain't that a big enough majority in any town?
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Let us be thankful for the fools; but for them the rest of us could not succeed.
- Following the Equator; Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar

If all the fools in this world should die, how lonely I should be.
- Letter to Olivia Clemens, 1/23/1885

The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.
- More Maxims of Mark, Johnson, 1927

On Death

2007-09-18T20:43:00.001-07:00

The Impartial Friend: Death, the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose refuge are for all--the soiled and the pure, the rich and the poor, the loved and the unloved.
- Mark Twain, last written statement; Moments with Mark Twain, Paine

Pity is for the living, envy is for the dead.
- Following the Equator

Death, the refuge, the solace, the best and kindliest and most prized friend and benefactor of the erring, the forsaken, the old and weary and broken of heart.
- Adam speech, 1883

On Evolution

2007-09-18T20:41:00.000-07:00

It now seems plain to me that that theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one...the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals.
- "The Lowest Animal"

On Education

2007-09-18T20:40:00.000-07:00

Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won't fatten the dog.
- Speech 11/23/1900

On Duty

2007-09-18T20:37:00.000-07:00

...a man's first duty is to his own conscience and honor; the party and country come second to that, and never first.
- Mark Twain, a Biography

On Democracy

2007-09-18T20:36:00.000-07:00

Men write many fine and plausible arguments in support of monarchy, but the fact remains that where every man in a state has a vote, brutal laws are impossible.
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

On Civilization

2007-09-18T20:35:00.001-07:00

Civilization largely consists in hiding human nature. When the barbarian learns to hide it we account him enlightened.
- quoted in I Remember by Opie Read, 1930

On Christianity

2007-09-18T20:33:00.000-07:00

If Christ were here there is one thing he would not be--a Christian.
- Mark Twain's Notebook

Christianity will doubtless still survive in the earth ten centuries hence--stuffed and in a museum.
- Notebook, 1898

You can never find a Christian who has acquired this valuable knowledge, this saving knowledge, by any process but the everlasting and all-sufficient "people say." In all my seventy-two years and a half I have never come across such another ass as this human race is.
- Mark Twain's Autobiography

On Censorship

2007-09-18T20:31:00.000-07:00

But the truth is, that when a Library expels a book of mine and leaves an unexpurgated Bible lying around where unprotected youth and age can get hold of it, the deep unconscious irony of it delights me and doesn't anger me.
- Letter to Mrs. F. G. Whitmore, 2/7/1907

On Beliefs

2007-09-18T20:29:00.000-07:00

If the man doesn't believe as we do, we say he is a crank, and that settles it. I mean, it does nowadays, because now we can't burn him.
- Following the Equator

On Beggars

2007-09-18T20:20:00.000-07:00

...the coat of arms of the human race ought to consist of a man with an ax on his shoulder proceeding toward a grindstone, or it ought to represent the several members of the human race holding out the hat to one another; for we are all beggars, each in is own way. One beggar is too proud to beg for pennies, but will beg for an introduction into society; another does not care for society, but he wants a postmastership; another will inviegle a lawyer into conversation and then sponge on him for free advice. The man who wouldn't do any of these things will beg for the Presidency. Each admires his own dignity and greatly guards it, but in his opinion the others haven't any. Mendicancy is a matter of taste and temperament, no doubt.
- Mark Twain, a Biography

On Activism

2007-09-18T20:14:00.000-07:00

...the citizen who thinks he sees that the commonwealth's political clothes are worn out, and yet holds his peace and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal; he is a traitor.
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court