Mark Twain

Public opinion is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God.

Gratitude is a debt which usually goes on accumulating like blackmail; the more you pay, the more is exacted. In time, you are made to realize that the kindness done you is become a curse and you wish it had not happened.

It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.

What do we call love, hate, charity, revenge, humanity, forgiveness? Different results of the master impulse, the necessity of securing one’s self-approval.

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.

You perceive I generalize with intrepidity from single instances. It is the tourist’s custom.

The more you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.

An average English word is four letters and a half. By hard, honest labor I’ve dug all the large words out of my vocabulary and shaved it down till the average is three and a half… I never write metropolis for seven cents, because I can get the same money for city. I never write policeman, because I can get the same price for cop…. I never write valetudinarian at all, for not even hunger and wretchedness can humble me to the point where I will do a word like that for seven cents; I wouldn’t do it for fifteen.

I was a great student. I was good at everything.

No one will ever get anywhere in this world unless he becomes a teacher, one who can show others how to do things.

Studying in countries like China isn’t only about your prospects in the global marketplace. It’s not just about whether you can compete with your peers in other countries to make America stronger. It’s also about whether you can come together and work together with them to make our world stronger. It’s about the friendships you make, the bonds of trust you establish and the image of America that you project to the rest of the world.

That’s the way to study history-by noting evolutionary processes.

The Supreme end of education is expert discernment in all things – the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and the counterfeit.

The most crucial use of knowledge and education is to understand the importance of developing a good heart.

The educated Southerner has no use for an ‘R’, except at the beginning of a word.

There is no education like adversity.

Because of the flexibility that community colleges afford, many students do not have to choose between an education and fulfilling other responsibilities – they can do both.

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.

It doesn’t hurt to get more education.

The function of the university is not simply to teach bread-winning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools or to be a centre of polite society; it is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment which forms the secret of civilization.

I grew up in a working-class neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago where most folks, including my parents, didn’t have college degrees. But with a lot of hard work – and a lot of financial aid – I had the chance to attend Princeton and Harvard Law School, and that gave me the confidence to pursue my ambitions.