11 Samuel Langhorne Clemens Quotes on Media

Samuel Langhorne Clemens quotes on media

8. Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.

27. The report of my death was an exaggeration.

54. We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking. And out of it we get an aggregation which we consider a boon. Its name is public opinion. It is held in reverence. Some think it the voice of God.

92. Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.

114. The trade of critic, in literature, music, and the drama, is the most degraded of all trades.

128. Against our traditions we are now entering upon an unjust and trivial war, a war against a helpless people, and for a base object - robbery. At first our citizens spoke out against this thing, by an impulse natural to their training. Today they have turned, and their voice is the other way. What caused the change? Merely a politician's trick - a high-sounding phrase, a blood-stirring phrase which turned their uncritical heads: Our Country, right or wrong! An empty phrase, a silly phrase. It was shouted by every newspaper, it was thundered from the pulpit, the Superintendent of Public Instruction placarded it in every schoolhouse in the land, the War Department inscribed it upon the flag. And every man who failed to shout it or who was silent, was proclaimed a traitor - none but those others were patriots. To be a patriot, one had to say, and keep on saying, 'Our Country, right or wrong,' and urge on the little war. Have you not perceived that that phrase is an insult to the nation? For in a republic, who is 'the Country'? Is it the Government which is for the moment in the saddle? Why, 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. Who, then, is 'the country?' Is it the newspaper? Is it the pulpit? Is it the school-superintendent? Why, these are mere parts of the country, not the whole of it; they have not command, they have only their little share in the command. They are but one in the thousand; it is in the thousand that command is lodged; they must determine what is right and what is wrong; they must decide who is a patriot and who isn't.

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

150. Humor must not professedly teach, and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

153. A lie can make it half way around the world before the truth has time to put its boots on. (This has also been attributed to Winston Churchill.)

182. Only presidents, editors and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial 'we'.

195. If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed. (Sometimes quoted as newspapers.)