The Mark Twain House & Museum

35 Mark Twain Quotes That Eerily Apply To The Current US Election

Mark Twain quotes prove that history repeats itself. 
Jane Drinkard
July 26, 2016
“What's the use you learning to do right, when it's troublesome to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?”
— Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Amazon Classics Edition)
Tagged: mark twain quotes, best mark twain quotes, Wrong, Right, morals, Ethics, Wisdom, Learning, Education, Growing Up
“All kings is mostly rapscallions.”
— Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Amazon Classics Edition)
Tagged: mark twain quotes, best mark twain quotes, Wrong, Right, morals, Ethics, Wisdom, kings, royalty, facade, Value
“Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it -- namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.”
— Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Tagged: Wisdom, Youth, Childhood, humanity, Law, Psychology, Desire, Longing, can'talwaysgetwhatyouwant, Value, Importance, the chase, wantwhatyoucan'thave, World, Truths, Relationships, Heartbreak
“Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things can not be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”
— Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad
Tagged: Wisdom, wholesome, Views, Men, humanity, Value, Experiences, travel, Learning, Growing Up, different, exchange, abroad, Culture, expanding, expand the mind, Acceptance, improve yourself, Self-awareness, inclusiveness, international
“One must travel, to learn. Every day, now, old Scriptural phrases that never possessed any significance for me before, take to themselves a meaning.”
— Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad
Tagged: Wisdom, wholesome, Views, Men, humanity, Value, Experiences, travel, Learning, Growing Up, different, exchange, abroad, Culture, expanding, expand the mind, Acceptance, improve yourself, Self-awareness, inclusiveness, international, Meaning
“Human nature appears to be just the same, all over the world.”
— Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad
Tagged: Human Nature, Natural, humanity, cross-culturally, sameness, difference, love is love, humans, international, The World, travel, realizations
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.”
— Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad
Tagged: Human Nature, Natural, humanity, cross-culturally, sameness, difference, love is love, humans, international, The World, travel, narrow-mindedness, solution, travel and love, kill bigotry, we need travel, end hate
“I am not given to exaggeration, and when I say a thing I mean it.”
— Mark Twain, Roughing It
Tagged: exaggeration, Lies, Truth, Meaning, Honesty, honest, humanity, Human Nature, tell it as it is, Reality
“All right, then, I'll go to hell.”
— Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Amazon Classics Edition)
Tagged: Hell, Heaven, resignation, bad boys, damn me to hell, humor, don't care
“Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and knows better.”
— Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Amazon Classics Edition)
Tagged: Right, Wrong, humanity, the right, Ignorance, Opinions, Isolation, Hatred, bigotry, discrimination, People
“Human beings can be awful cruel to one another.”
— Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Amazon Classics Edition)
Tagged: human beings, humanity, Cruelty, Hate, discrimination, bigotry, racism, Thoughts, Philosophy
“The world is made wrong; kings should go to school to their own laws, at times, and so learn mercy.”
— Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper
Tagged: kings, the system, Mercy, Learning, Laws, schools, Education, Experience, Life Experience, Class, Wealth, wealth disparity, Life, Equality, Injustice, Inequality
“It does us all good to unbend sometimes.”
— Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper
Tagged: Flexibility, tense, unbend, Think, Goodness, Good, humanity, Relationships, give in
“You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”
— Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Tagged: depend, Imagination, Vision, Future, Mind, thoughtfulness, Perception, connectedness, Experience, Trust, Self-awareness, Think, mental power
“Words are only painted fire, a look is the fire itself. She gave that look, and carried it away to the treasury of heaven, where all things that are divine belong.”
— Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Tagged: Words, Power of Words, look, Women, Power, Heaven, divinity, humanity, power of a look, actions, actions speak louder than words
“But as soon as one is at rest in this world off he goes on something else to worry about.”
— Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Tagged: Mind, Thoughts, worry, Anxiety, Thinking, Rest, peacefulness, no rest, riddled with worry, Anxious, deep thinker, headcase
“Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.”
— Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson
Tagged: adam, eve, adam & eve, the forbidden apple, Forbidden, Human Nature, humanity, Mistakes, mistake, serpent, Desire, Longing, consumption, want what you can't have
“Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.”
— Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson
Tagged: humor, Funny, Irony, good example, maturity, above it, Goodness, Ethics, morals, upright, Good Person, humanity
“There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and
shallow: Yet it was the schoolboy who said 'Faith is believing what you
know ain't so'.”
— Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson
Tagged: schoolboy, Faith, Reason, realist, Reality, Belief, Believe, Religion, critical mind, Thinking, Thoughts, Philosophy, philosophize, Childhood, bully, bullies
“Every man is a suffering-machine and a happiness- machine combined. The two functions work together harmoniously, with a fine and delicate precision, on the give-and-take principle.”
— Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger
Tagged: self, Self-awareness, Being, creature, Body, Reality, Dream, Imagination, Dreams, Spiritual, physical, Existence, God, Man, Suffering, Happiness, harmony, function, human machine, give and take
“Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race—the individual's distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety's or comfort's sake, to stand well in his neighbor's eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of minorities. There was never a country where the majority of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions.”
— Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger
Tagged: monarchies, Systems, the system, Religion, Minorities, slaves, minority, neighbor, Hate, bigotry, institutions, country, America, Oppression, heart, Loyalty, Philosophy
“That's the difference between governments and individuals. Governments don't care, individuals do.”
— Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad
Tagged: Government, Care, Compassion, sympathy, Understanding, connectivity, humanity, Systems, institutions, Inequality, Injustice
“His hair was short and parted accurately in the middle, and he had all the look of an American person who would be likely to begin his signature with an initial, and spell his middle name out.”
— Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad
Tagged: American, humor, Funny, american man, Privilege, privileged, Wealth
“How little a thing can make us happy when we feel that we have earned it.”
— Mark Twain, The Diaries of Adam and Eve
Tagged: Happiness, Hope, earn, Hard Work, hard work pays off, little things, Life, beauty, deserving, Wealth, Values
“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.”
— Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
Tagged: fiction, Truth, strange, stranger than fiction, Possibility, possibilities, Life, Reality, Realism, Logic, Science, fact
“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, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
Tagged: White Men, racism, humor, Funny, The World, Truth, idea, Idealism, classism, Class, savage, savagery, Perspective, stupidity, idiocy, History, history repeats itself, order, system, America, Colonialism
“Be good and you will be lonesome.”
— Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
Tagged: Lonely, Goodness, morals, Ethics, humanity, Truth, unfortunate truth, Reality, realist, Logic, Life, way of life
“The joy of killing! the joy of seeing killing done - these are traits of the human race at large.”
— Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
Tagged: Killing, Murder, Joy, creepy, Human Nature, savage, savagery, barbarians, humanity, Hatred, human race, Characteristics, Society
“But language is a treacherous thing, a most unsure vehicle, and it can seldom arrange descriptive words in such a way that they will not inflate the facts-by help of the readers imagination, which is always ready to take a hand, and work for nothing, and do the bulk of it at that.”
— Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
Tagged: Language, treachery, vehicle, Communication, Facts, Truth, Imagination, description, Writing, Reading, Magic, consumption, Knowledge, Learning
“Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute.”
— Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth
Tagged: Reason, Man, humanity, Animals, animal, savage, stupidity, idiocy, idiots, America, Society, Human Nature, foolish, civilization, issues, problematic