“The American Lion of St. Mark’s,” from Life magazine (1901)
No, we are not going to ignore those two subjects you always were told to ignore—politics and religion. Mark Twain just had too much sound advice on both topics. And we happen to be in desperate need of sanity on these topics. First up is politics, and we’d all be on a better road if we followed Mark Twain’s guidance in this tricky territory.
Yes, you are right—I am a moralist in disguise; it gets me into heaps of trouble when I go thrashing around in political questions.
—1902 letter
If the man doesn’t believe as we do, we say he is a crank, and that settles it. I mean, it does nowadays, because now we can’t burn him.
—Following the Equator (1897)
Men think they think upon the great political questions, and they do; but they think with their party, not independently; they read its literature, but not that of the other side.
—“Corn-pone Opinions”
You see my kind of loyalty was loyalty to one’s country, not to its institutions, or its office holders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death. To be loyal to rags, to shout for rags, to worship rags, to die for rags—this is loyalty to unreason, it is pure animal; it belongs to monarchy, was invented by monarchy; let monarchy keep it.
—A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889)
The citizen who thinks he sees that the commonwealth’s political clothes are worn out, and yet holds his peace and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal; he is a traitor.
—A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889)
St. Patrick had no politics; his sympathies lay with the right—that was politics enough. When he came across a reptile, he forgot to inquire whether he was a Democrat or a Republican, but simply exalted his staff and “let him have it.”
—1876 letter
Every citizen of the republic ought to consider himself an unofficial policeman, and keep unsalaried watch and ward over the laws and their execution.
—“Traveling With a Reformer”
Citizenship should be placed above everything else, even learning. Is there in any college of the land a chair of citizenship where good citizenship and all that it implies is taught? There is not one—that is, not one where sane citizenship is taught. There are some which teach insane citizenship, bastard citizenship, but that is all. Patriotism! Yes; but patriotism is usually the refuge of the scoundrel. He is the man who talks the loudest.
—1908 speech
Citizenship is what makes a republic; monarchies can get along without it.
—1906 speech
For in a republic, who is “the Country”? Is it the Government which is for the moment in the saddle? Why, the Government is merely a servant—merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn’t. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them. Who, then, is “the Country”? Is it the newspaper? Is it the pulpit?
Is it the school superintendent? Why, these are mere parts of the country, not the whole of it; they have not command, they have only their little share in the command. They are but one in a thousand; it is in the thousand that command is lodged; they must determine what is right and what is wrong; they must decide who is a patriot and who isn’t.
—“Papers of the Adam Family”
We teach them to take their patriotism at second-hand; to shout with the largest crowd without examining into the right or wrong of the matter—exactly as boys under monarchies are taught and have always been taught. We teach them to regard as traitors, and hold in aversion and contempt, such as do not shout with the crowd, and so here in our democracy we are cheering a thing which of all things is most foreign to it and out of place—the delivery of our political conscience into somebody else’s keeping. This is patriotism on the Russian plan.
—quoted in Mark Twain: A Biography (1912)
by Albert Bigelow Paine
Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world—and never will.
—1887 speech
These same men who enthusiastically preach loyal consistency to church and party are always ready and willing and anxious to persuade a Chinaman or an Indian or a Kanaka to desert his church, or a fellow-American to desert his party. The man who deserts to them is all that is high and pure and beautiful—apparently; the man who deserts from them is all that is foul and despicable. This is Consistency with a capital C.
—1887 speech
What is the most rigorous law of our being? Growth. No smallest atom of our moral, mental, or physical structure can stand still a year. It grows. It must grow; nothing can prevent it . . . it cannot stand still. In other words, we change—and must change, constantly, and keep on changing as long as we live. What, then, is the true gospel of consistency? Change. Who is the really consistent man? The man who changes. Since change is the law of his being, he cannot be consistent if he sticks in a rut. Yet . . . there are those who would misteach us that to stick in a rut is consistency—and a virtue; and that to climb out of the rut is inconsistency—and a vice.
—1887 speech
I am persuaded that the world has been tricked into adopting some false and most pernicious notions about consistency—and to such a degree that the average man has turned the rights and wrongs of things entirely around and is proud to be “consistent,” unchanging, immovable, fossilized, where it should be his humiliation that he is so.
—1887 speech
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).
—1904 notebook entry
It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.
—Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894)
The new party member who supposed himself independent will presently find that the party has somehow got a mortgage on his soul, and that within a year he will recognize the mortgage, deliver up his liberty, and actually believe he cannot retire from the party from any motive, however high and right, in his own eye, without shame and dishonor. Is it possible for human wickedness to invent a doctrine more infernal and poisonous than this? What slave is so degraded as the slave who is proud that he is a slave?
—1887 speech
This atrocious doctrine of allegiance to party plays directly into the hands of politicians of the baser sort . . . for they know that the docile party will vote for any forked thing they put up, even though it does not even strictly resemble a man.
—1887 speech
If we would learn what the human race really is at bottom, we need only observe it in election times.
—Autobiography
Without a blush he will vote for an unclean boss if that boss is the party’s Moses, without compunction he will vote against the best man in the whole land if he is on the other ticket.
—1906 speech
No party holds the privilege of dictating to me how I shall vote. If loyalty to party is a form of patriotism, I am no patriot. If there is any valuable difference between a monarchist and an American, it lies in the theory that the American can decide for himself what is patriotic and what isn’t. I claim that difference. I am the only person in the sixty millions that is privileged to dictate my patriotism.
—quoted in Mark Twain: A Biography (1912)
by Albert Bigelow Paine
I have said there that when Europe gets a ruler lodged in her gullet, there is no help for it but a bloody revolution; here we go and get a great big, emetical ballot, and heave it up.
—1889 interview
Good citizenship would teach accuracy of thinking and accuracy of statement.
—1908 speech
That’s the difference between governments and individuals. Governments don’t care, individuals do.
—A Tramp Abroad (1880)
No country can be well governed unless its citizens as a body keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians of the law and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more.
—The Gilded Age (1873)
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
—quoted in Mark Twain: A Biography (1912)
by Albert Bigelow Paine
It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
—Following the Equator (1897)
History has tried hard to teach us that we can’t have good government under politicians. Now, to go and stick one at the very head of the government couldn’t be wise.
—quoted in the New York Herald (1876)
I think I can say, and say with pride, that we have some legislatures that bring higher prices than any in the world.
—1873 speech
An honest man in politics shines more than he would elsewhere.
—A Tramp Abroad (1880)
The lightning there is peculiar; it is so convincing, that when it strikes a thing it doesn’t leave enough of that thing behind for you to tell whether—well, you’d think it was something valuable, and a Congressman had been there.
—1876 speech
There is something good and motherly about Washington, the grand old benevolent National Asylum for the helpless.
—The Gilded Age (1873)
But above all and beyond all, it can be said with entire sincerity, the he is a square, honest man—a square, honest man in politics, think of that—and I will remark here, in confidence, that he occupies an almighty lonesome position.
—1879 speech
All Congresses and Parliaments have a kindly feeling for idiots, and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity.
—Autobiography
The government of my country snubs honest simplicity, but fondles artistic villainy, and I think I might have developed into a very capable pickpocket if I had remained in the public service a year or two.
—Roughing It (1872)
Whiskey is carried into committee rooms in demijohns [large bottle with narrow neck] and carried out in demagogues.
—1868 notebook entry
It is curious—curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare.
—Mark Twain in Eruption (1940)
The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.
—Mark Twain in Eruption (1940)
I have never made but one political speech before this. That was years ago. I made a logical, closely reasoned, compact, powerful argument against a discriminating and iniquitous tax which was about to be imposed by the opposition—I may say I made a most thoughtful, symmetrical, and admirable argument; but a Michigan newspaper editor answered it—refuted it—utterly demolished it—by saying I was in the constant habit of horsewhipping my great grandmother.
—1879 speech
I don’t mind what the opposition say of me so long as they don’t tell the truth about me. But when they descend to telling the truth about me I consider that this is taking an unfair advantage.
—1879 speech
The ablest newspaper in Colorado—the ablest newspaper in the world—has recently nominated me for President . . . If I had realized that this canvass was to turn on the candidate’s private character, I would have started that Colorado paper sooner. I know the crimes that can be imputed and proved against me can be told on the fingers of your hands—not all your hands, but only just simply the most of them. This cannot be said of any other presidential candidate in the field.
—1884 speech
The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.
—1898 notebook
Here I was, in a country where a right to say how the country should be governed was restricted to six persons in each thousand of its population . . . I was become a stockholder in a corporation where nine hundred and ninety-four of the members furnished all the money and did all the work, and the other six elected themselves a permanent board of directors and took all the dividends. It seemed to me that what the nine hundred and ninety-four dupes needed was a new deal.
—A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889)
I shall not often meddle with politics, because we have a political Editor who is already excellent and only needs to serve a term or two in the penitentiary to be perfect.
—quoted in Mark Twain: A Biography (1912)
by Albert Bigelow Paine
