Mark Twain Quotes

“Human beings can be awful cruel to one another.”
― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Conservatism is the blind and fear-filled worship of dead radicals.”
― Mark Twain

“Never have a battle of wits with an unarmed person.”
― Mark Twain

“I apologize for such a long letter - I didn't have time to write a short one.”
― Mark Twain

“The more things are forbidden, the more popular they become.”
― Mark Twain

“Loyalty to a petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.”
― Mark Twain

“A man once said, 'All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.' Mark Twain, you know. He had a fine mustache. Men of wisdom so often do.”
― Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke & Bone

“Huck [Finn] and Tom [Sawyer] represent two viable models of the American Character. They exist side by side in every American and every American action. America is, and always has been, undecided about whether it will be the United States of Tom or the United States of Huck. The United States of Tom looks at misery and says: Hey, I didn't do it. It looks at inequity and says: All my life I have busted my butt to get where I am, so don't come crying to me. Tom likes kings, codified nobility, unquestioned privilege. Huck likes people, fair play, spreading the truck around. Whereas Tom knows, Huck wonders. Whereas Huck hopes, Tom presumes. Whereas Huck cares, Tom denies. These two parts of the American Psyche have been at war since the beginning of the nation, and come to think of it, these two parts of the World Psyche have been at war since the beginning of the world, and the hope of the nation and of the world is to embrace the Huck part and send the Tom part back up the river, where it belongs.”
― George Saunders, The Braindead Megaphone

“Each of you, for himself or herself, by himself or herself, and on his or her own responsibility, must speak. It is a solemn and weighty responsibility and not lightly to be flung aside at the bullying of pulpit, press, government or politician. Each must decide for himself or herself alone 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 it against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor. It is traitorous both against yourself and your country.
Let men label you as they may, if you alone of all the nation decide one way, and that way be the right way by your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country, hold up your head for you have nothing to be ashamed of.”
― Mark Twain, The Bible According to Mark Twain: Irreverent Writings on Eden, Heaven, and the Flood by America's Master Satirist

“His head was an hour-glass; it could stow an idea, but it had to do it a grain at a time, not the whole idea at once.”
― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

“Why should I have to hide the fact that I don't believe there’s a supreme being? There’s no proof of it. There’s no harm in saying you’re an atheist. It doesn't mean you treat people any differently. I live by the Golden Rule to do unto others, as you'd want to be treated.

I just simply don't believe in religion, and I don’t believe necessarily that there’s a supreme being that watches over all of us. I follow the teachings of George Carlin. George said he worshipped the sun. He was a fellow atheist. I’m in good company … Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, Charles Darwin. It’s not like I’m not with good company and intelligent people. There have been some good, intelligent atheists who have lived in the world.”
― Jesse Ventura

“Heaven is by favor; if it were by merit your dog would go in and you would stay out. Of all the creatures ever made (man) is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he is the only one... that possesses malice. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain.”
― Mark Twain

“The signs of excessive indulgence in this destructive pastime are easily detectable. They are these: A disposition to eat, to drink, to smoke, to meet together convivially, to laugh, to joke, and tell indelicate stories— and mainly, a yearning to paint pictures.”
― Mark Twain, On Masturbation

“Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilt.”
― Mark Twain, On Religion

“I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it." - Mark Twain”
― Mike McManus

“I read from Mark Twain's lips one or two of his good stories. He has his own way of thinking, saying and doing everything. I feel the twinkle of his eye in his handshake. Even while he utters his cynical wisdom in an indescribably droll voice, he makes you feel that his heart is a tender Iliad of human sympathy.”
― Helen Keller, The Story of My Life

“It don't make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person's conscience ain't got no sense, and just goes for him anyway.”
― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Mark Twain der ki: 'Cennet ve cehennem hakkında ileri geri konuşmam, çünkü her ikisinde de dostlarım var.”
― Murat Menteş, Dublörün Dilemması

“Wherever he found his speech growing too modern -- which was about every sentence or two -- he ladled in a few such Scriptural phrases as "exceeding sore," "and it came to pass," etc., and made things satisfactory again. "And it came to pass" was his pet. If he had left that out, his Bible would have been only a pamphlet.”
― Mark Twain, Roughing It

“I like Joan of Arc best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well. And besides, it furnished me seven times the pleasure afforded me by any of the others; twelve years of preparation, and two years of writing. The others need no preparation and got none.”
― Mark Twain

“Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered—either by themselves or by others.”
― Sean Patrick, Nikola Tesla: Imagination and the Man That Invented the 20th Century

“I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before.”
― Mark Twain

“You can find in a text whatever you bring, if you will stand between it and the mirror of you imagination. You may not see your ears, but they will be there.”
― Mark Twain, The Celebrated Jumping Frog and Other Stories

“The highest perfection of politeness is only a beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of graceful and gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying.”
― Mark Twain, On the Decay of the Art of Lying

“Some people scorn a cat and think it not an essential; but the Clemens tribe are not of these.”
― Mark Twain

“Life itself is only a vision, a dream. Nothing exists save empty space and you. And you, are but a thought.”
― Mark Twain

“I prefer the wit of Shakespeare or Mark Twain. But, truth be told, to get a laugh, a cheap laugh, all you have to do is..." Rip interrupted with another well-timed fart.”
― GLEN NESBITT, Joe the Alien

“The world of Mark Twain seems so very far away from us. Today that half-wild innocent America of his childhood memories is a lost continent, sunk forever under those arid deserts of asphalt, those oceans of poison sludge, those mountains of technological garbage which are the monuments of the human dilemma we like to call progress. It’s nice though to catch a glimpse of things as they used to be... a landscape painted in words to bring us back for a moment, to that early morning of the American day so blithe and free when we were still on speaking terms with Mother Earth.”
― Orson Welles

“The trouble with you Chicago people is, that you think you are the best people down here [in hell]; whereas you are merely the most numerous.”
― Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

“For Mark there waits a brighter crown!
When Peter comes his card to read—
He’ll take the sign “No Smoking” down,
Then Heaven will be Heaven indeed.”
― Oliver Herford