The best Mark Twain quotes (that he actually wrote)
The top 3 according to 803 votes from people: The report of my death was an exaggeration. · Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as you please. · Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.. (Updated Apr 15, 2021.)
Twain is the most misquoted writer in America. These are his real lines, each with the book, notebook or interview it comes from. Not his: «Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed…» and «I have never let my schooling interfere with my education».
Top 12
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1
The report of my death was an exaggeration.
To a New York Journal reporter in 1897; it's usually misquoted as «greatly exaggerated».
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2
Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as you please.
Quoted by Rudyard Kipling after interviewing him, in From Sea to Sea (1899).
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3
Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
Card sent to the Young People's Society of a Brooklyn church in 1901.
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4
Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.
Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, in Following the Equator (1897).
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5
Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894).
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6
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Notebook entry from 1904.
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7
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.
Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar, in Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894).
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8
Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894).
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9
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.
The Innocents Abroad (1869), his book about a trip to Europe and the Holy Land.
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10
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.
Following the Equator (1897).
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11
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Popularized by Twain in his autobiography (1906), who credited it to Disraeli; nobody has found it in Disraeli's writings.
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12
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
Collected in More Maxims of Mark (1927).
Candidates
They don't make it into the top 12… yet. Vote for them to move them up.
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13
Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed down-stairs a step at a time.
Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894).
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14
Familiarity breeds contempt—and children.
From his notebooks, published in 1935.
How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.
Is something missing?
Comments (20)
Habit coaxed downstairs a step at a time, so wise.
Finally a Twain list without the fake 'twenty years from now' quote. Thank you!
Love that you only included quotes he actually wrote.
The report of my death one is perfect.
'The report of my death was an exaggeration' — and everybody adds 'greatly'. Good catch.
Courage is mastery of fear, not absence of fear. Great one.
Pudd'nhead Wilson has so many gems, the calendar entries are hilarious.
'Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as you please' — the motto of every news channel 😂
Saving this, thanks.
Read The Innocents Abroad last year, it's still funny.
'Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.' Perfect.
Huck Finn should have a quote here.
Clothes make the man line always cracks me up.
Travel is fatal to prejudice, should be printed on every passport.
Quote Investigator is my favourite site because of guys like Twain 😄
The 'lies, damned lies and statistics' note about Disraeli is interesting, never knew.
Twain was the original internet comedian.
Love that you included the source for each one.
Twain's notebooks are full of gold.
'Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.' Needed today.