Quote

Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

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
Force
Kinds
Arranging
Often
Case
Remarks
Three
Figures
Damned
Kind
Lies
Apply
Would
Cases
Statistics
Disraeli
Justice
Investing
Beguile
Lying
Humorous
Attributed
Funny
Particularly
Remark

More quotes by Mark Twain

Image
There has never been a Protestant boy nor a Protestant girl whose mind the Bible has not soiled.
Mark Twain
Image
The ancients stole all our ideas from us.
Mark Twain
Image
One must keep one's character. Earn a character first if you can, and if you can't, then assume one.
Mark Twain
Image
Have a place for everything and keep the thing somewhere else. This is not advice, it is merely custom.
Mark Twain
Image
Learning softeneth the heart and breedeth gentleness and charity.
Mark Twain
Image
It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.
Mark Twain
Image
Leaving out the gamblers, the burglars, and the plumbers, perhaps we do put our trust in God after a fashion. But, after all, it is an overstatement. If the cholera or black plague should come to these shores, perhaps the bulk of the nation would pray to be delivered from it, but the rest would put their trust in The Health Board.
Mark Twain
Image
The thing for us to do is just to do our duty, and not worry about whether anybody sees us do it or not.
Mark Twain
Image
To do something, say something, see something, before anybody else -- these are things that confer a pleasure compared with which other pleasures are tame and commonplace, other ecstasies cheap and trivial.
Mark Twain
Image
When a man stands on the verge of seventy-two you know perfectly well that he never reached that place without knowing what this life is - heartbreaking bereavement.
Mark Twain
Image
There is a great difference between feeding parties to wild beasts and stirring up their finer feelings in an inquisition. One is the system of degraded barbarians, the other of enlightened civilized people.
Mark Twain
Image
A mine is a hole in the ground with a liar on top.
Mark Twain
Image
But it was ever thus, all through my life: whenever I have diverged from custom and principle and uttered a truth, the rule has been that the hearer hadn't strength of mind enough to believe it.
Mark Twain
Image
An open mind leaves a chance for someone to drop a worthwhile thought in it.
Mark Twain
Image
There is nothing more awe-inspiring than a miracle except the credulity that can take it at par.
Mark Twain
Image
To write without pay until somebody offers pay. If nobody offers pay within three years, the candidate may look upon this circumstance with the most implicit confidence as the sign that sawing wood is what he was intended for.
Mark Twain
Image
Temperate temperance is best intemperate temperance injures the cause of temperance.
Mark Twain
Image
Grown people everywhere are always likely to cling to the religion they were brought up in.
Mark Twain
Image
Learn from the mistakes of others - you won't live long enough to make them all yourself. He's opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer him the position.
Mark Twain
Image
I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.
Mark Twain