26 Samuel Langhorne Clemens Quotes on Ethics

Samuel Langhorne Clemens quotes on ethics

7. I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices.

12. Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough.

38. Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it.

40. Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest.

46. Customs do not concern themselves with right or wrong or reason. But they have to be obeyed; one reasons all around them until he is tired, but he must not transgress them, it is sternly forbidden.

48. It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare.

55. The lack of money is the root of all evil.

58. Jesus died to save men -- a small thing for an immortal to do, & didn't save many, anyway; but if he had been damned for the race that would have been act of a size proper to a god, & would have saved the whole race. However, why should anybody want to save the human race, or damn it either? Does God want its society? Does Satan?

59. A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.

61. Always acknowledge a fault frankly. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you opportunity to commit more.

73. There was no getting around the stubborn fact that taking sweetmeats was only 'hooking,' while taking bacon and hams and such valuables was plain simple stealing - and there was a command against that in the Bible. So they inwardly resolved that so long as they remained in the business, their piracies should not again be sullied with the crime of stealing.

88. I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself, 'All right, then, I'll GO to hell.'

97. I have no race prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. All I care to know is that a man is a human being, and that is enough for me; he can't be any worse.

104. The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.

111. A God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice, and invented hell -- mouths mercy, and invented hell -- mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people, and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites his poor abused slave to worship him!

113. Of all the creatures that were made he [man] is the most detestable. Of the entire brood he is the only one - the solitary one - that possesses malice. That is the basest of all instincts, passions, vices - the most hateful...He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain...Also - in all the list he is the only creature that has a nasty mind.

121. Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.

129. In a monarchy, the king and his family are the country; in a republic it is the common voice of the people. Each of you, for himself, by himself and on his own responsibility, must speak. And it is a solemn and weighty responsibility, and not lightly to be flung aside at the bullying of pulpit, press, government, or the empty catch-phrases of politicians. Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide it against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may. If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country - hold up your head! You have nothing to be ashamed of. Only when a republic's life is in danger should a man uphold his government when it is in the wrong. There is no other time. This Republic's life is not in peril. The nation has sold its honor for a phrase. It has swung itself loose from its safe anchorage and is drifting, its helm is in pirate hands.

137. I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.

141. Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.

146. 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?

173. It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not to deserve them.

178. Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear, and the blind can read.

191. Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.

202. The minority is always in the right. The majority is always in the wrong.

212. Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it.