Quotations by Mark Twain IV

Mark Twain, America's best humorist

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.


The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.


A crank is someone with a new idea -- until it catches on.


I would rather have my ignorance than another man's knowledge, because I have so much of it.


It isn't safe to sit in judgment upon another person's illusion when you are not on the inside. While you are thinking it is a dream, he may be knowing it is a planet.


Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today.


I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week, sometimes, to make it up.


As a thinker and planner the ant is the equal of any savage race of men; as a self-educated specialist in several arts she is the superior of any savage race of men; and in one or two high mental qualities she is above the reach of any man, savage or civilized!


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.


The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creatures that cannot.