Mark Twain Quotations

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

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

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

Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom the harder it is to get rid of it.

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living; the world owes you nothing; it was here first.

By trying, we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.

Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul.

Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

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.

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

By and by when each nation has 20,000 battleships and 5,000,000 soldiers we shall all be safe and the wisdom of statesmanship will stand confirmed.

One frequently only finds out how really beautiful a really beautiful woman is after considerable acquaintance with her; and the rule applies to Niagara Falls, to majestic mountains, and to mosques--especially to mosques.

We are all beggars, each in his own way.

We despise all reverences and all objects of reverence which are outside the pale of our list of sacred things. And yet, with strange inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy to us.

Between believing a thing and thinking you know is only a small step and quickly taken. -- 3,000 Years Among the Microbes.

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

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

When I am king, they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books, for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved.

I don't suppose there was much danger. People born to be hanged are safe in water.

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

For business reasons, I must preserve the outward sign of sanity.

Change is the handmaiden Nature requires to do her miracles with.

We are always too busy for our children; we never give them the time or interest they deserve. We lavish gifts upon them; but the most precious gift--our personal association, which means so much to them--we give grudgingly.

There has been only one Christian. They caught and crucified him--early.

Can we afford Civilization?

No civilization can be perfect until exact equality between man and woman is included.

The radical of one century is the conservative of the next.

Customs do not concern themselves with right or wrong or reason.

Strip the human race absolutely naked and it would be a real democracy.

What is it that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a man's breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring to him? Discovery! To know that you are walking where none others have walked; that you are beholding what human eye has not seen before; that you are breathing a virgin atmosphere. To give birth to an idea--to discover a great thought.

I never let my schooling interfere with my education.

Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned.

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

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

God puts something good and lovable in every man His hands create.

Our Country, right or wrong... Have you not perceived that that phrase is an insult to the nation?

What is the most rigorous law of our being? Growth. No smallest atom of our moral, mental, or physical structure can stand still a year. It grows--it must grow; nothing can prevent it.

The heart is the real Fountain of Youth.

The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read.

The less a man knows the bigger the noise he makes and the higher the salary he commands.

The master minds of all nations, in all ages, have sprung in affluent multitude from the mass of the nations, and from the mass of the nation only--not from its privileged classes.

Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.

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

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... and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel.... And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for the universal brotherhood of man - with his mouth.