Mark Twain

Quotes

• “The Jew is not a disturber of the peace of any country. Even his enemies will concede that. He is not a loafer, he is no...”
• “I have no special regard for Satan; but, I can at least claim that I have no prejudice against him. It may even be that ...”
• “Solomon, who was one of the Deity's favorites, had a copulation cabinet composed of seven hundred wives and three hundre...”
• “To put it in rude, plain, unpalatable words - true patriotism, real patriotism: loyalty not to a Family and a Fiction, b...”
• “There is a sumptuous variety about the New England weather that compels the stranger's admiration - and regret. The weat...”
• “We began to stir against slavery. Hearts grew soft, here, there, and yonder. There was no place in the land where the se...”
• “The kingly office is entitled to no respect; it was originally procured by the highwayman's methods; it remains a perpet...”
• “Citizenship? We have none! In place of it we teach patriotism which Samuel Johnson said a hundred and forty or a hundred...”
• “These facts are all on the credit side of the proposition that the Jew is a good and orderly citizen. Summed up, they ce...”
• “In estimating worldly values the Jew is not shallow, but deep. With precocious wisdom he found out in the morning of tim...”
• “But who prays for Satan? Who in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed i...”
• “When the doctrine of allegiance to party can utterly up-end a man's moral constitution and make a temporary fool of him ...”
• “Benjamin Franklin did a great many notable things for his country, and made her young name to be honored in many lands a...”
• “Man has been here 32,000 years. That it took a hundred million years to prepare the world for him is proof that that is ...”
• “No California gentleman or lady ever abuses or oppresses a Chinaman, under any circumstances, an explanation that seems ...”
• “As an active privilege, [free speech] ranks with the privilege of committing murder: we may exercise it if we are willin...”
• “When even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will neve...”
• “Mark Twain is a heroic figure in literature, and everybody who studies American literature or American history knows abo...”
• “Your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon-laughter. Power, Money, Persuasion, Supplicati...”
• “There was no getting around the stubborn fact that taking sweetmeats was only "hooking," while taking bacon and hams and...”
• “You may say a cat uses good grammar. Well, a cat does -- but you let a cat get excited once; you let a cat get to pullin...”
• “In the cotton States, after the war...the Jew came down in force, set up shop on the plantation, supplied all the negro'...”
• “When Adam ate the apple in the Garden and learned how to multiply and replenish, the other animals learned the Art, too,...”
• “Actual source: A letter to The Economist (16 January 1971), written by one M.J. Shields (or M.J. Yilz, by the end of the...”
• “The Erie railroad kills 23 to 46; the other 845 railroads kill an average of one-third of a man each; and the rest of th...”
• “Jesus died to save men - a small thing for an immortal to do, & didn't save many, anyway; but if he had been damned for ...”
• “To play golf is to spoil an otherwise enjoyable walk" is found in H.S. Scrivener, "Memories of Men and Meetings", in Art...”
• “I have seen it stated that no expert is quick enough to run over a dog; that a dog is always able to skip out of his way...”
• “The minister gave out his text and droned along monotonously through an argument that was so prosy that many a head by a...”
• “Mark Twain about the infamous 1904 Casement report (detailing the abuses in the Congo Free State by Roger Casement) Quot...”
• “A critic never made or killed a book or a play. The people themselves are the final judges. It is their opinion that cou...”
• “There is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a Dream, a grotesque and foo...”
• “Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladnes...”
• “Probable nor'east to sou'west winds, varying to the soutard and westard and eastard and points between; high and low bar...”
• “Address at a meeting of the Berkeley Lyceum, New York, November 23, 1900. Quoted in Mark Twain's Speeches (1910), ed. Wi...”
• “Stub Ends of Thoughts" by Arthur G. Lewis, a collection of sayings, in Book of the Royal Blue Vol. 14, No. 7 (April 1911...”
• “: The manuscript from which this was taken was written and edited from 1902 to 1908. See: Mark Twain Project, Ed., No. 4...”
• “There are those who imagine that the unlucky accidents of life-life's "experiences"-are in some way useful to us. I wish...”
• “It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people [the Filipinos] free, and let them deal with th...”
• “Is not this insanity plea becoming rather common? Is it not so common that the reader confidently expects to see it offe...”
• “There warn't anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there warn't any lock on the door, and hogs likes a p...”
• “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. B...”
• “An unpopular opinion concerning politics or religion lies concealed in the breast of every man; in many cases not only o...”
• “I have seen Chinamen abused and maltreated in all the mean, cowardly ways possible to the invention of a degraded nature...”
• “English as She Is Taught", The Century, Vol. 33, No. 6, April 1887. A slightly abridged version was reprinted as Introdu...”
• “Speech to the Savage Club, 9 June 1899, in Mark Twain's Speeches (1910), ed. William Dean Howells, pp. 277-278. (Possibl...”
• “The bicycle had what is called the 'wabbles', and had them very badly. In order to keep my position, a good many things ...”
• “I am persuaded that in Russia, Austria, and Germany nine-tenths of the hostility to the Jew comes from the average Chris...”
• “A 1993 newspaper humor column attributes this saying to Reader's Digest: "Picking it up from a Reader's Digest fan, Will...”
• “Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to ...”