All Quotes

"Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run."

"Tomorrow night I appear for the first time before a Boston audience — 4000 critics."

"He is now fast rising from affluence to poverty."

"Ah, it was worth ten years of a man’s life to be dead then! Everything was pleasant. I was in a good neighbourhood, for all the dead people that lived near me belonged to the best families in the city."

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

"Formerly, if you killed a man, it was possible that you were insane—but now, if you, having friends and money, kill a man, it is evidence that you are a lunatic."

"Is not this insanity plea becoming rather common? Is it not so common that the reader confidently expects to see it offered in every criminal case that comes before the courts? [...] Really, what we want now, is not laws against crime, but a law against insanity."

"It [the press] has scoffed at religion till it has made scoffing popular. It has defended official criminals, on party pretexts, until it has created a United States Senate whose members are incapable of determining what crime against law and the dignity of their own body is—they are so morally blind—and it has made light of dishonesty till we have as a result a Congress which contracts to work for a certain sum and then deliberately steals additional wages out of the public pocket and is pained and surprised that anybody should worry about a little thing like that."

"Benjamin Franklin did a great many notable things for his country, and made her young name to be honored in many lands as the mother of such a son. It is not the idea of this memoir to ignore that or cover it up. No; the simple idea of it is to snub those pretentious maxims of his, which he worked up with a great show of originality out of truisms that had become wearisome platitudes as early as the dispersion from Babel."

"This poor little one-horse town."

"It has become a sarcastic proverb that a thing must be true if you saw it in a newspaper. That is the opinion intelligent people have of that lying vehicle in a nutshell. But the trouble is that the stupid people–who constitute the grand overwhelming majority of this and all other nations–do believe and are moulded and convinced by what they get out of a newspaper, and there is where the harm lies."... "That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse."

"A baby is an inestimable blessing and bother."

"The funniest things are the forbidden."

"We haven't all had the good fortune to be ladies; we haven't all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground."

"Among the three or four million cradles now rocking in the land are some which this nation would preserve for ages as sacred things, if we could know which ones they are."

"Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."

"Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any."

"When the doctrine of allegiance to party can utterly up-end a man's moral constitution and make a temporary fool of him besides, what excuse are you going to offer for preaching it, teaching it, extending it, perpetuating it? Shall you say, the best good of the country demands allegiance to party? Shall you also say it demands that a man kick his truth and his conscience into the gutter, and become a mouthing lunatic, besides?"

"Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world — and never will."

"He [George Washington Cable] has taught me to abhor and detest the Sabbath day and hunt up new and troublesome ways to dishonor it."

"I was convinced that Lake Como was a large basin of water similar to the Tahoe, also surrounded by immense mountains whose slopes reach the shores, but here the lake is not a basin, since the banks are articulated like those of a stream and is a quarter or two thirds wide of the Mississippi. Along the coast there is not a single strip of flat land, but endless chains of mountains which suddenly emerge from the lake surface and rise towards the sky for one hundred or two hundred feet, constantly varying in shape. The rocky ridges are covered with numerous plant species and dotted with white villas that peek through lush foliage. Even on the top of the promontory we saw pretty little houses perched on picturesque pinnacles, more than a thousand feet above our heads."

"An experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite picturesque liar."

"It does look as if Massachusetts were in a fair way to embarrass me with kindnesses this year. In the first place, a Massachusetts judge has just decided in open court that a Boston publisher may sell, not only his own property in a free and unfettered way, but also may as freely sell property which does not belong to him but to me; property which he has not bought and which I have not sold. Under this ruling I am now advertising that judge's homestead for sale, and, if I make as good a sum out of it as I expect, I shall go on and sell out the rest of his property."

"As I slowly grow wise I briskly grow cautious."

"A circle is a round straight line with a hole in the middle."

"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then Success is sure."

"The kingly office is entitled to no respect; it was originally procured by the highwayman’s methods; it remains a perpetuated crime, can never be anything but the symbol of a crime. It is not more entitled to respect than is the flag of a pirate. A monarch, (whether good or bad), when good, is entitled to the consideration which we accord to a pirate who keeps Sunday school between crimes; when bad, (or a nullity) he is entleed [sic] to none at all."

"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—'tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning."

"To create man was a fine and original idea; but to add the sheep was a tautology."

"We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking. And out of it we get an aggregation which we consider a boon. Its name is public opinion. It is held in reverence. Some think it the voice of God."

"The other night the view appeared even more surprising and picturesque. On the other side (of Lake Como) cliffs, trees and very white houses reflected their perfectly clear images on the lake and long beams of light, coming from distant windows, marked the motionless surface. Immediately next to it, great silver mansions under the moon shone among a thick dark and shapeless foliage, among the shadows that fell from the top of the cliffs and touched the lake edge where every stretch of the magical vision was reflected several times and with precision."

"Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it."

"I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position."

"If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything."

"James Ross Clemens, a cousin of mine, was seriously ill two or three weeks ago in London, but is well now. The report of my illness grew out of his illness; the report of my death was an exaggeration."

"A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape."

"[Citing a familiar "American joke":] In Boston they ask, How much does he know? In New York, How much is he worth? In Philadelphia, Who were his parents?"

"Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and resentments flit away and a sunny spirit takes their place."

"Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please."

"I believe I am not interested to know whether Vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't. To know that the results are profitable to the race would not remove my hostility to it. The pains which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity towards it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further. It is so distinctly a matter of feeling with me, and is so strong and so deeply-rooted in my make and constitution, that I am sure I could not even see a vivisector vivisected with anything more than a sort of qualified satisfaction."

"I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I'm not feeling so well myself."

"It was generally conceded that had an election been held, Ho Chi Minh would have been elected Premier."

"I was against it on two counts. First, the Japanese were ready to surrender, and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon."

"I share the sense of shock and dismay that the entire nation must feel at the despicable act that took the life of the nation's president. On the personal side, Mrs. Eisenhower and I share the grief that Mrs. Kennedy must now feel. We send to her our prayerful thoughts and sympathetic sentiments in this hour."

"The government in Washington belongs to you."

"One circumstance that helped our character development: we were needed. I often think today of what an impact could be made if children believed they were contributing to a family's essential survival and happiness. In the transformation from a rural to an urban society, children are — though they might not agree — robbed of the opportunity to do genuinely responsible work."

"Character in many ways is everything in leadership. It is made up of many things, but I would say character is really integrity. When you delegate something to a subordinate, for example, it is absolutely your responsibility, and he must understand this. You as a leader must take complete responsibility for what the subordinate does. I once said, as a sort of wisecrack, that leadership consists of nothing but taking responsibility for everything that goes wrong and giving your subordinates credit for everything that goes well."

"We are so proud of our guarantees of freedom in thought and speech and worship, that, unconsciously, we are guilty of one of the greatest errors that ignorance can make — we assume our standard of values is shared by all other humans in the world."

"It is my personal conviction that almost any one of the newborn states of the world would far rather embrace Communism or any other form of dictatorship than acknowledge the political domination of another government, even though that brought to each citizen a far higher standard of living."

"[James R. Killian] saw Eisenhower a few months before his death. The former President asked about "my scientists" and said, "You know, Jim, this bunch of scientists was one of the few groups that I encountered in Washington who seemed to be there to help the country and not themselves.""