Mark Twain Quotes on Man (101 Quotes)

One of my theories is that the hearts of men are about alike, no matter what their skin color.

Morals are an acquirement -- like music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker, paralysis -- no man is born with them.

Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal... In truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things which other animals easily learn, he is incapable of learning. Among my experiments was this. In an hour I taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. They lived together in peace even affectionately.

Crank a man with a new idea until it succeeds.

This morning arrives a letter from my ancient silver-mining comrade, Calvin H. Higbie, a man whom I have not seen nor had communication with for forty-four years.... Footnote Roughing It is dedicated to Higbie. ... I shall allow myself the privilege of copying his punctuation and his spelling, for to me they are a part of the man. He is as honest as the day is long. He is utterly simple-minded and straightforward, and his spelling and his punctuation are as simple and honest as he is himself. He makes no apology for them, and no apology is needed.

...It is hard to overestimate how far a man can go in America if he looks good on a horse.

It is agreed, in this country, that if a man can arrange his religion so that it perfectly satisfies his conscience, it is not incumbent on him to care whether the arrangement is satisfactory to anyone else or not

Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out... and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel... And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for 'the universal brotherhood of man' - with his mouth.

A wise man does not waste so good a commodity as lying for naught.

Man is the religious animal. He is the only religious animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion - several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat, if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven.

I've come loaded with statistics, for I've noticed that a man can't prove anything without statistics.

Man is a museum of diseases, a home of impurities he comes today and is gone tomorrow he begins as dirt and departs as stench.

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 . . .

Rise early. It is the early bird that catches the worm. Don't be fooled by this absurd saw I once knew a man who tried it. He got up at sunrise and a horse bit him.

What would men be without women? Scarce, sir, mighty scarce.

A man can seldom -- very, very, seldom -- fight a winning fight against his training the odds are too heavy.

I could have become a soldier if I had waited I knew more about retreating than the man who invented retreating.

An ethical man is a Christian holding four aces.

All schools, all colleges, have two great functions to confer, and to conceal, valuable knowledge. The theological knowledge which they conceal cannot justly be regarded as less valuable than that which they reveal. That is, when a man is buying a basket of strawberries it can profit him to know that the bottom half of it is rotten.1908, notebook

I respect a man who knows how to spell a word more than one way.

We like a man to come right out and say what he thinks, if we agree with him.

Habit is habit, and not to be flung out the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.

Nature makes the locust with an appetite for crops man would have made him with an appetite for sand

All that I care to know is that a man is a human being that is enough for me he can't be any worse.

Almost any man worthy of his salt would fight to defend his home, but no one ever heard of a man going to war for his boarding house

He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it- namely, in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.

Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself envied.

When some men discharge an obligation, you can hear the report for miles around.

Man is the only creature who has a nasty mind.

In all my travels the thing that has impressed me the most is the universal brotherhood of man what there is of it.

Nothing so liberalizes a man and expands the kindly instincts that nature put in him as travel and contact with many kind of people

What ought to be done to the man who invented the celebrating of anniversaries Mere killing would be too light.

What a man misses mostly in heaven is company.

What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn't have done it. Who was it who said, Blessed is the man who has found his work Whoever it was he had the right idea in his mind. Mark you, he says his work--not somebody else's work. The work that is really a man's own work is play and not work at all. Cursed is the man who has found some other man's work and cannot lose it. When we talk about the great workers of the world we really

I believe I have no prejudices whatsoever. All I need to know is that a man is a member of the human race. That's bad enough for me.

Man is the only animal that blushes - or needs to.

If man had created man, he would be ashamed of his performance.

In a museum in Havana there are two skulls of Christopher Columbus -- 'one when he was a boy and one when he was a man.'

Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough.

No man is straitly honest to any but himself and God

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

But when the time comes that a man has had his dinner, then the true man comes to the surface

I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.

If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat.

As I have said before, I never had any large respect for good spelling. That is my feeling yet. Before the spelling-book came with its arbitrary forms, men unconsciously revealed shades of their characters, and also added enlightening shades of expression to what they wrote by their spelling, and so it is possible that the spelling-book has been a doubtful benevolence to us.

Of all God's creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with a cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.

. . . a man must not hold himself aloof from the things which his friends and his community have at heart if he would be liked . . .

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 stick in a rut.

Only when a republic's life is in danger should a man uphold his government when it is wrong. There is no other time.

Each of you, for himself, by himself and on his own responsibility, must speak. And it is a solemn and weighty responsibility, and not lightly to be flung aside at the bullying of pulpit, press, government, or the empty catchphrases of politicians. Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let man label you as they may. If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country- hold up your head You have nothing to be ashamed of.