33 Great Mark Twain Quotes
With The Great Gatsby making a fuckton of money this weekend, the time has come for the mainstream to start rediscovering and championing the beloved authors of the past. (I want Nicolas Windig Refn’s The Sun Also Rises, stat.) For your consideration, America, I give you Mark Twain, the wittiest man who ever lived. As a tribute to Twain, here are some his most beloved quotes. He probably didn’t even say most of them, even though they are attributed to them. I think Twain would have liked that.
1. “Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.”
2. “Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.”
3. “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.”
4. “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
5. “Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.”
6. “Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I’ve done it thousands of times.”
7. “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.”
8. “In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.”
9 .“A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.”
10. “Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.”
11. “Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.”
12. “The lack of money is the root of all evil.”
13. “If the world comes to an end, I want to be in Cincinnati. Everything comes there ten years later.”
14. “All generalizations are false, including this one.”
15. “There are lies, damned lies and statistics.”
16. “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.”
17. “To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.”
18. “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.”
19. “I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.
20. “Never put off ‘til tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.”
21. “The trouble ain’t that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain’t distributed right.”
22. “Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.”
23. “Classic: A book which people praise and don’t read.”
24. “Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.”
25. “Familiarity breeds contempt – and children.”
26. “My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water.”
27. “Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.”
28. “When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.”
29. “Part of the secret of a success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.”
30. “Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial ‘we.’”
31. “The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.”
32. “The Public is merely a multiplied ‘me.’”
33. “Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.” 