Mark Twain Quotes About Politics
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Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.
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Few things are more irritating than when someone who is wrong is also very effective in making his point.
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The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopt.
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The new political gospel: public office is private graft.
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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.
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All war must be just the killing of strangers against whom you feel no personal animosity; strangers whom, in other circumstances, you would help if you found them in trouble, and who would help you if you needed it.
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Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
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George Washington, as a boy, was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.
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It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress.
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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?
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My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its office-holders.
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Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.
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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.
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No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.
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I was an arden Hayes man, but that was natural, for I was pretty young at the time, I have since convinced myself that the political opinioins of a nation are of next to no value, in any case, but that what little rag of value they posess is to be found among the old, rather than among the young.
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Demagogue--a vessel containing beer and other liquids.
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The political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely food for laughter, they are an entire banquet.
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When politics enter into municipal government, nothing resulting therefrom in the way of crimes and infamies is then incredible. It actually enables one to accept and believe the impossible.
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All large political doctrines are rich in difficult problems - problems that are quite above the average citizen's reach. And that is not strange, since they are also above the reach of the ablest minds in the country; after all the fuss and all the talk, not one of those doctrines has been conclusively proven to be the right one and the best.
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Fleas can be taught nearly anything a congressman can.
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Where every man in a state has a vote, brutal laws are impossible.
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Imagine, if you will, that I am an idiot. Then, imagine that I am also a Congressman. But, alas, I repeat myself.
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We have the best government that money can buy.
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Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.
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We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove. We have two opinions: one private, which we are afraid to express; and another one - the one we use - which we force ourselves to wear to please Mrs. Grundy, until habit makes us comfortable in it, and the custom of defending it presently makes us love it, adore it, and forget how pitifully we came by it. Look at it in politics.
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Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.
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It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
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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.
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I never can think of Judas Iscariot without losing my temper. To my mind Judas Iscariot was nothing but a low, mean, premature, Congressman.
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In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.
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