Mark Twain

Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.

I don’t like to commit myself about heaven and hell – you see, I have friends in both places.

When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet deep down in his private heart no man much respects himself.

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.

There are lies, damned lies and statistics.

Unconsciously we all have a standard by which we measure other men, and if we examine closely we find that this standard is a very simple one, and is this: we admire them, we envy them, for great qualities we ourselves lack. Hero worship consists in just that. Our heroes are men who do things which we recognize, with regret, and sometimes with a secret shame, that we cannot do. We find not much in ourselves to admire, we are always privately wanting to be like somebody else. If everybody was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.

Never read any book that is not a year old.

If you look for perfection, you’ll never be content.

Science does not know its debt to imagination.

You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

We bust build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.

In peace, as a wise man, he should make suitable preparation for war.

The greatest glory in living lies in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

Fortitude is the marshal of thought, the armor of the will, and the fort of reason.

You show your worth by what you seek! – Rumi

Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future.

Go into the street, and give one man a lecture on morality, and another a shilling, and see which will respect you most.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

At the end of the day, life is about being happy being who you are.

The less government we have the better.