Quote

Really, what we want now, is not laws against crime, but a law against insanity. That is where the true evil lies.

Mark Twain

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Mark Twain
Age: 74 †
Born: 1835
Born: November 30
Died: 1910
Died: April 21
Aphorist
Author
Autobiographer
Humorist
Journalist
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Prosaist
Science Fiction Writer
Teacher
Florida
Missouri
Samuel Langhorne Clemens
Samuel L. Clemens
Samuel Clemens
Lies
Crime
Law
Lying
Evil
True
Really
Insanity
Laws

More quotes by Mark Twain

Image
The Germans are exceedingly fond of Rhine wines they are put up in tall, slender bottles, and are considered a pleasant beverage. One tells them from vinegar by the label.
Mark Twain
Image
If God had meant for us to be naked, we'd have been born that way.
Mark Twain
Image
What God lacks is convictions- stability of character. He ought to be a Presbyterian or a Catholic or something- not try to be everything.
Mark Twain
Image
The proverb says, Born lucky, always lucky, and I am very superstitious. As a small boy I was notoriously lucky. It was usual for one or two of our lads (per annum) to get drowned in the Mississippi or in Bear Creek, but I was pulled out in a 2/3 drowned condition 9 times before I learned to swim, and was considered to be a cat in disguise.
Mark Twain
Image
All gentle cant and philosophizing to the contrary notwithstanding, no people in this world ever did achieve their freedom by goody-goody talk and moral suasion: it being immutable law that all revolutions that will succeed, must begin in blood.
Mark Twain
Image
His money is twice tainted: taint yours and taint mine.
Mark Twain
Image
Modesty antedates clothes and will be resumed when clothes are no more.
Mark Twain
Image
Ours is the land of the free-nobody denies that-nobody challenges it. (Maybe it is because we won't let other people testify.)
Mark Twain
Image
Golden rule: Made of hard metal so it could stand severe wear, it not being known at that time that butter would answer.
Mark Twain
Image
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
Mark Twain
Image
America cannot have an empire abroad and a Republic at home.
Mark Twain
Image
I speak French with timidity, and not flowingly--except when excited. When using that language I have often noticed that I have hardly ever been mistaken for a Frenchman, except, perhaps, by horses never, I believe, by people.
Mark Twain
Image
What is the chief end of man?-to get rich. In what way?-dishonestly if we can honestly if we must. Who is God, the one and only true? Money is God. Gold and Greenbacks and Stock-father, son, and ghosts of same, three persons in one These are the true and only God, mighty and supreme.
Mark Twain
Image
Experience comes from bad judgment.
Mark Twain
Image
Names are not always what they seem.
Mark Twain
Image
Prophesy is a good line of business, but it is full of risks.
Mark Twain
Image
It was on the 10th day of May - 1884 - that I confessed to age by mounting spectacles for the first time, and in the same hour I renewed my youth, to outward appearance, by mounting a bicycle for the first time. The spectacles stayed on.
Mark Twain
Image
The modern patriotism, the true patriotism, the only rational patriotism is loyalty to the Nation all the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.
Mark Twain
Image
Constellations have always been troublesome things to name. If you give one of them a fanciful name, it will always refuse to live up to it it will always persist in not resembling the thing it has been named for.
Mark Twain
Image
Humor is the great thing, the saving thing after all. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations, and resentments flit away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.
Mark Twain