Mark Twain
NMyTree
Posts: 2,374
" Look at the tyranny of party--at what is called party allegiance, party loyalty--a snare invented by designing men for selfish purposes--and which turns voters into chattles, slaves, rabbits, and all the while their masters, and they themselves are shouting rubbish about liberty, independence, freedom of opinion, freedom of speech, honestly unconscious of the fantastic contradiction; and forgetting or ignoring that their fathers and the churches shouted the same blasphemies a generation earlier when they were closing their doors against the hunted slave, beating his handful of humane defenders with Bible texts and billies, and pocketing the insults and licking the shoes of his Southern master." - "The Character of Man," Mark Twain's Autobiography
" So much blood has been shed by the Church because of an omission from the Gospel: "Ye shall be indifferent as to what your neighbor's religion is." Not merely tolerant of it, but indifferent to it. Divinity is claimed for many religions; but no religion is great enough or divine enough to add that new law to its code. "
- Mark Twain, a Biography
" To lodge all power in one party and keep it there is to insure bad government and the sure and gradual deterioration of the public morals."
- Mark Twain's Autobiography
" I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey's."
- Mark Twain in Eruption
" ...one of the first achievements of the legislature was to institute a ten-thousand-dollar agricultural fair to show off forty dollars' worth of pumpkins in -- however, the Territorial legislature was usually spoken of as the "asylum".
- Roughing It
" The political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely food for laughter, they are an entire banquet."
- Mark Twain in Eruption
" We despise all reverences and all the objects of reverence which are outside the pale of our own list of sacred things. And yet, with strange inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy to us."
- Following the Equator
" Man is a 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....The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste. "
- "The Lowest Animal"
" The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also. I would not interfere with any one's religion, either to strengthen it or to weaken it. I am not able to believe one's religion can affect his hereafter one way or the other, no matter what that religion may be. But it may easily be a great comfort to him in this life--hence it is a valuable possession to him. "
- Mark Twain, a Biography
" The Koran does not permit Mohammedans to drink. Their natural instincts do not permit them to be moral. They say the Sultan has eight hundred wives. This almost amounts to bigamy."
- The Innocents Abroad
" Zeal and sincerity can carry a new religion further than any other missionary except fire and sword. "
- Christian Science
" We have to keep our God placated with prayers, and even then we are never sure of him--how much higher and finer is the Indian's God......Our illogical God is all-powerful in name, but impotent in fact; the Great Spirit is not all-powerful, but does the very best he can for his injun and does it free of charge. "
- Marginalia written in copy of Richard Irving Dodge's Our Wild Indians
" So much blood has been shed by the Church because of an omission from the Gospel: "Ye shall be indifferent as to what your neighbor's religion is." Not merely tolerant of it, but indifferent to it. Divinity is claimed for many religions; but no religion is great enough or divine enough to add that new law to its code. "
- Mark Twain, a Biography
" To lodge all power in one party and keep it there is to insure bad government and the sure and gradual deterioration of the public morals."
- Mark Twain's Autobiography
" I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey's."
- Mark Twain in Eruption
" ...one of the first achievements of the legislature was to institute a ten-thousand-dollar agricultural fair to show off forty dollars' worth of pumpkins in -- however, the Territorial legislature was usually spoken of as the "asylum".
- Roughing It
" The political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely food for laughter, they are an entire banquet."
- Mark Twain in Eruption
" We despise all reverences and all the objects of reverence which are outside the pale of our own list of sacred things. And yet, with strange inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy to us."
- Following the Equator
" Man is a 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....The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste. "
- "The Lowest Animal"
" The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also. I would not interfere with any one's religion, either to strengthen it or to weaken it. I am not able to believe one's religion can affect his hereafter one way or the other, no matter what that religion may be. But it may easily be a great comfort to him in this life--hence it is a valuable possession to him. "
- Mark Twain, a Biography
" The Koran does not permit Mohammedans to drink. Their natural instincts do not permit them to be moral. They say the Sultan has eight hundred wives. This almost amounts to bigamy."
- The Innocents Abroad
" Zeal and sincerity can carry a new religion further than any other missionary except fire and sword. "
- Christian Science
" We have to keep our God placated with prayers, and even then we are never sure of him--how much higher and finer is the Indian's God......Our illogical God is all-powerful in name, but impotent in fact; the Great Spirit is not all-powerful, but does the very best he can for his injun and does it free of charge. "
- Marginalia written in copy of Richard Irving Dodge's Our Wild Indians
0