Top 500 Mark Twain Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

— Mark Twain

52. “It’s better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt.”

— Mark Twain

53. “Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.”

— Mark Twain

54. “But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?”

— Mark Twain

55. “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

— Mark Twain

56. “Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”

— Mark Twain

57. “Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.”

— Mark Twain

58. “They did not know it was impossible so they did it.”

— Mark Twain

59. “Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times.”

— Mark Twain

60. “In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards.”

— Mark Twain

61. “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”

— Mark Twain

62. “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”

— Mark Twain

63. “The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.”

— Mark Twain

64. “Good decisions come from experience. Experience comes from making bad decisions.”

— Mark Twain

65. “Success is a journey, not a destination. It requires constant effort, vigilance and reevaluation.”

— Mark Twain

66. “Just because you’re taught that something’s right and everyone believes it’s right, it don’t make it right.”

— Mark Twain

67. “Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”

— Mark Twain

68. “The trouble is not in dying for a friend, but in finding a friend worth dying for.”

— Mark Twain

69. “All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.”

— Mark Twain

70. “Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.”

— Mark Twain

71. “Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”

— Mark Twain

72. “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”

— Mark Twain

73. “The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.”

— Mark Twain

74. “Don’t dream your life, but live your dream.”

— Mark Twain

75. “The lack of money is the root of all evil.”

— Mark Twain

76. “A man’s character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.”

— Mark Twain

77. “Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.”

— Mark Twain

78. “Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.”

— Mark Twain

79. “Do not complain about growing old. It is a privilege denied to many.”

— Mark Twain

80. “There is nothing so annoying as having two people talking when you’re busy interrupting.”

— Mark Twain

81. “In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.”

— Mark Twain

82. “When angry, count four. When very angry, swear.”

— Mark Twain

83. “Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.”

— Mark Twain

84. “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them have never happened.”

— Mark Twain

85. “Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.”

— Mark Twain

86. “Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts or happenings. It consist mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever flowing through one’s head.”

— Mark Twain

87. “A gentleman is someone who knows how to play the banjo and doesn’t.”

— Mark Twain

88. “Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.”

— Mark Twain

89. “Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.”

— Mark Twain

90. “Courage is not the lack of fear. It is acting in spite of it.”

— Mark Twain

91. “No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot.”

— Mark Twain

92. “The truth hurts, but silence kills.”

— Mark Twain

93. “There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.”

— Mark Twain

94. “Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.”

— Mark Twain

95. “Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.”

— Mark Twain

96. “Don’t wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.”

— Mark Twain

97. “A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.”

— Mark Twain

98. “It’s easy to make friends, but hard to get rid of them.”

— Mark Twain

99. “The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it he knows too little.”

— Mark Twain

100. “Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.”

— Mark Twain