Mark Twain famous quotes

Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
-- Mark Twain

#Inspirational #Relationship #Inspiring

There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.
-- Mark Twain

#Inspirational #Life #Nature

I hate to hear people say this Judge will vote so and so, because he is a Democrat -- and this one so and so because he is a Republican. It is shameful. The Judges have the Constitution for their guidance; they have no right to any politics save the politics of rigid right and justice when they are sitting in judgment upon the great matters that come before them.
-- Mark Twain

#Hate #People #Justice

Good judgement is the result of experience and experience the result of bad judgement.
-- Mark Twain

#Inspirational #Life #Judgement

Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.
-- Mark Twain

#Inspirational #Funny #Life

If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed.
-- Mark Twain

#Inspirational #Funny #Humor

Just because you’re taught that something’s right and everyone believes it’s right, it don’t make it right.
-- Mark Twain

#Believe #Taught

Give every day the chance to become the most beautiful day of your life.
-- Mark Twain

#Beautiful #Giving #Beautiful Day

If we were meant to talk more than listen, we would have two mouths and one ear.
-- Mark Twain

#Motivational #Educational #Two

Fortune knocks at every man's door once in a life, but in a good many cases the man is in a neighboring saloon and does not hear her.
-- Mark Twain

#Men #Doors #Luck

Prosperity is the best protector of principle.
-- Mark Twain

#Political #Literature #Principles

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.
-- Mark Twain

#Education #Dog #School

Stripping away the irrational, the illogical, and the impossible, I am left with atheism. I can live with that.
-- Mark Twain

#Religion #Atheism #Impossible

Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.
-- Mark Twain

#Motivational #Perfection #Improvement

A mine is a hole in the ground with a liar on top.
-- Mark Twain

#Liars #Holes

Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."
-- Mark Twain

#Lying #Humorous #Justice

Use the right word, not its second cousin.
-- Mark Twain

#Cousin #Use

A person that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was gitting knowledge that was always going to be useful to him, and warn't ever going to grow dim or doubtful.
-- Mark Twain

#Cat #Home #Tails

If we would learn what the human race really is at bottom, we need only observe it in election times.
-- Mark Twain

#Race #Political #Needs

Most people can't bear to sit in church for an hour on Sundays. How are they supposed to live somewhere very similar to it for eternity?
-- Mark Twain

#Death #Sunday #People

All war must be just the killing of strangers against whom you feel no personal animosity; strangers whom, in other circumstances, you would help if you found them in trouble, and who would help you if you needed it.
-- Mark Twain

#War #Politics #Helping

Some of the worst things in my life never even happened.
-- Mark Twain

#Worst

I am trying to get the hang of this new fangled writing machine, but I am not making a shining success of it. However, this is the first attempt I have ever made & yet I perceive I shall soon & easily acquire a fine facility in its use. ... The machine has several virtues. I believe it will print faster than I can write. One may lean back in his chair & work it. It piles an awful stack of words on one page. It don't muss things or scatter ink blots around. Of course it saves paper.
-- Mark Twain

#Believe #Writing #Typewriters

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.
-- Mark Twain

#Class #Tyrants #Mind

The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog.
-- Mark Twain

#Inspirational #Life #Sarcastic

The secret of getting ahead is getting started
-- Mark Twain

#Positive #Secret #Getting Started

So I became a newspaperman. I hated to do it but I couldnt find honest employment.
-- Mark Twain

#Employment #Honest #Hated

The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.
-- Mark Twain

#Inspirational #Motivational #Positive

Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.
-- Mark Twain

#Music #Witty #Humorous

Sing like no one is listening, LOVE LIKE YOU'VE NEVER BEEN HURT, dance like nobody's watcbing, and live like it's heaven on earth.
-- Mark Twain

#Love #Inspirational #Life

Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.
-- Mark Twain

#Inspirational #Education #Learning

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

#Sarcastic #Party #Sarcasm

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

#Motivational #Positive #Pain

Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it.
-- Mark Twain

#Baby #Men #Censorship

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.
-- Mark Twain

#Travel #Memorable #Carpe Diem

Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.
-- Mark Twain

#Inspiration #Ignorance #Cocky

A half-truth is the most cowardly of lies.
-- Mark Twain

#Lying #Half #Truth Is

I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey's.
-- Mark Twain

#Men #Religion #Matter

Of the delights of this world, man cares most for sexual intercourse, yet he has left it out of his heaven.
-- Mark Twain

#Men #Light #Heaven

There is probably no pleasure equal to the pleasure of climbing a dangerous Alp; but it is a pleasure which is confined strictly to people who can find pleasure in it.
-- Mark Twain

#Climbing #People #Alps

Last week, I stated this woman was the ugliest woman I had ever seen. I have since been visited by her sister, and now wish to withdraw that statement.
-- Mark Twain

#Inspirational #Wish #Lasts

A circle is a round straight line with a hole in the middle.
-- Mark Twain

#Circles #Lines #Holes

The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven not man's.
-- Mark Twain

#Dog #Animal #Men

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.
-- Mark Twain

#Inspirational #Funny #Sarcastic

The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.
-- Mark Twain

#Sad #History #Historical

The public is the only critic whose opinion is worth anything at all.
-- Mark Twain

#Writing #Editors #Criticism

How often we recall with regret that Napoleon once shot at a magazine editor and missed him and killed a publisher. But we remember with charity that his intentions were good.
-- Mark Twain

#Regret #Editors #Magazines

for business reasons, I must preserve the outward signs of sanity.
-- Mark Twain

#Sanity #Reason

The history of our race, and each individual’s experience, are sown thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal.
-- Mark Twain

#Truth #Lying #Race

Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge.
-- Mark Twain

#Education #Wise #Stupid

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.
-- Mark Twain

#Peace #War #Passion

[Patriotism] ...is a word which always commemorates a robbery. There isn't a foot of land in the world which doesn't represent the ousting and re-ousting of a longline of successive "owners" who each in turn, as "patriots" with proud swelling hearts defended it against the next gang of "robbers" who came to steal it and did -- and became swelling-hearted patriots in their turn.
-- Mark Twain

#Heart #Land #Feet

The church is always trying to get other people to reform, it might not be a bad idea to reform itself a little, by way of example
-- Mark Twain

#Religious #Ideas #People

Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
-- Mark Twain

#Religion #Cows #Sacred

We could use up two Eternities in learning all that is to be learned about our own world and the thousands of nations that have arisen and flourished and vanished from it. Mathematics alone would occupy me eight million years.
-- Mark Twain

#Science #Years #Two

I am always on the side of the revolutionists, because there never was a revolution unless there were some oppressive and intolerable conditions against which to revolute.
-- Mark Twain

#Revolution #Sides

An uneasy conscience is a hair in the mouth.
-- Mark Twain

#Hair #Mouths #Uneasy

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

#Inspirational #Inspiring #Education

Our heroes are men who do things which we recognize, with regret, and sometimes with a secret shame, that we cannot do.
-- Mark Twain

#Regret #Hero #Men

Don't dream your life, but live your dream
-- Mark Twain

#Dream #Live Your Dreams

There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one - keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.
-- Mark Twain

#Happiness #Happy #People

To believe yourself brave is to be brave; it is the one only essential thing.
-- Mark Twain

#Courage #Believe #Bravery

There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.
-- Mark Twain

#Glasses #Ideas #Giving

If it is a Miracle, any sort of evidence will answer, but if it is a Fact, proof is necessary
-- Mark Twain

#Miracle #Answers #Facts

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

#Graduation #Funny Life #Attitude

Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
-- Mark Twain

#Funny #Fake People #Halloween

All schools, all colleges have two great functions: to confer, and to conceal valuable knowledge.
-- Mark Twain

#School #Knowledge #College

A little lie can travel half way 'round the world while Truth is still lacing up her boots.
-- Mark Twain

#Lying #Half #World

It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected.
-- Mark Twain

#Lying #Inspiration #Doe

There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.
-- Mark Twain

#Inspiration #Humorous #Men

I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but I won't.
-- Mark Twain

#Motivational #Truth #Lying

Sane and intelligent human beings are like all other human beings, and carefully and cautiously and diligently conceal their private real opinions from the world and give out fictitious ones in their stead for general consumption.
-- Mark Twain

#Real #Intelligent #Giving

The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself.
-- Mark Twain

#Loneliness #Being Alone #Worst

In God We Trust. I don't believe it would sound any better if it were true.
-- Mark Twain

#Believe #Religion #Sound

I can teach anybody how to get, what they want out of life. The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want. Once you are crystal clear about the intended end result that you seek to produce, all the ways that it can become a done deal start to reveal themselves to you. There are many who have accomplished exactly what you want to achieve and could show you the way. You are not ready to ask them because you are not clear and you have not determined which questions need answers.
-- Mark Twain

#Inspirational Life #Needs #Done

What is human life? The first third a good time; the rest remembering about it.
-- Mark Twain

#Past #Firsts #Good Times

Those that respect the law and love sausage should watch neither being made.
-- Mark Twain

#Love #Law #Sausage

The citizen who sees his society's democratic clothes being worn out and does not cry it out, is not a patriot, but a traitor.
-- Mark Twain

#Clothes #Doe #Citizens

The nation is divided, half patriots and half traitors, and no man can tell which from which.
-- Mark Twain

#Men #Half #Patriot

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.
-- Mark Twain

#Inspirational #Motivational #Positive

Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.
-- Mark Twain

#Politics #Diapers #Politician

Drag your thoughts away from your troubles... by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.
-- Mark Twain

#Good Life #Cancer #Positive Thinking

The finest clothing made is a person's own skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this.
-- Mark Twain

#Society #Skins #Demand

God created war so that Americans would learn geography.
-- Mark Twain

#Inspirational #Life #Education

The best cure for Christianity is reading the Bible.
-- Mark Twain

#Bible #Reading #Christianity

And what is a man without energy? Nothing - nothing at all.
-- Mark Twain

#Men #Energy

The weakest of all weak things is a virtue that has not been tested in the fire.
-- Mark Twain

#Art #Fire #Virtue

Love your enemy, it will scare the hell out of them.
-- Mark Twain

#Love You #Enemy #Scare

You are a coward when you even seem to have backed down from a thing you openly set out to do
-- Mark Twain

#Coward

Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
-- Mark Twain

#Writing #Editors #Crafts

Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
-- Mark Twain

#Inspirational #Funny #Happiness

Always tell the truth. That way you don't have to remember what you said.
-- Mark Twain

#Truth #Way #Politics

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
-- Mark Twain

#Science #Math #Return

To be satisfied with what one has; that is wealth. As long as one sorely needs a certain additional amount, that man isn't rich.
-- Mark Twain

#Men #Long #Satisfaction

Adam was not alone in the Garden of Eden, however, and does not deserve all the credit; much is due to Eve, the first woman, and Satan, the first consultant.
-- Mark Twain

#Wisdom #Garden #Eden

The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.
-- Mark Twain

#Spring #Inspiration #Years

Data is like garbage. You'd better know what you are going to do with it before you collect it.
-- Mark Twain

#Communication #Data #Garbage

I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals" (so called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me.
-- Mark Twain

#Dog #Men #Animal

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.
-- Mark Twain

#Fire #Looks

To refuse awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than is normal.
-- Mark Twain

#Inspiration #Awards #Noise