Here are 40 of Mark Twain’s most famous aphorisms:
“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”
“The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.”
“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
“It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”
“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”
“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”
“Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.”
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.”
“Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.”
“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.”
“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”
“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
“Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”
“All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.”
“The lack of money is the root of all evil.”
“A clear conscience is the sure sign of a bad memory.”
“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society.”
“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
“The truth must be served like a coat, and not thrown in the face like a wet towel.”
“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn’t.”
“I can live for two months on a good compliment.”
“Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.”
“A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.”
“Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”
“The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.”
“Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.”
“Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I’ve done it thousands of times.”
“Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.”
“Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.”
“The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog.”
“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.”
“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”
“Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.”
“There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.”
“To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.”
“Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.”
“Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.”
“Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”
“When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear.”
Problems Considered
|Climate Change | National Debt | Income Taxes | Health Care | Abortion |
| Tariffs | Inflation | Moving On | Electrification | Homelessness |
| Independent Media | Education | Gender-neutral Pronoun|
Aphorisms
| Martin Luther King, Jr | Ghandi |
| Jesus | Jewish | Mohammad| Buddha | Hindu |
| Dick Feynman | Robert Ingersoll | Mark Twain | Will Rogers|
Anecdotes
Dick Feynman Winston Churchill