Mark Twain quotations

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

- Mark Twain's Autobiography

We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking.
-"Corn-pone Opinions"

In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.
- The Innocents Abroad

The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.
- Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

...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

There's a good spot tucked away somewhere in everybody. You'll be a long time finding it, sometimes.
- "Refuge of the Derelicts"

The mania for giving the Government power to meddle with the private affairs of cities or citizens is likely to cause endless trouble, through the rivaly of schools and creeds that are anxious to obtain official recognition, and there is great danger that our people will lose our independence of thought and action which is the cause of much of our greatness, and sink into the helplessness of the Frenchman or German who expects his government to feed him when hungry, clothe him when naked, to prescribe when his child may be born and when he may die, and, in fine, to regulate every act of humanity from the cradle to the tomb, including the manner in which he may seek future admission to paradise.
- "Official Physic"