Archive for Mark Twain on Politics
On Keeping an Open Mind and Freeing a Human Soul
Posted by: | Comments“Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world – and never will.”
-Mark Twain
Freedom begins with keeping an open mind.
On Town Hall Meetings
Posted by: | Comments“The thug is aware that loudness convinces sixty persons where reasoning convinces but one.”
-Mark Twain
But those sixty people are convinced of an argument upon which there is no basis in reason – the thug makes a fool of his followers and a mockery of rational thought.
On Hockey Moms and Vice Presidents
Posted by: | Comments“Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes time and annoys the pig.”
-Mark Twain
And putting lipstick on the pig doesn’t help either. If Sarah Palin has taught us anything, this is it.
On Confusing Belief with Truth and Repition with Examination
Posted by: | Comments“In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing”
-Mark Twain, Autobiography
I know its true ‘cause I just read it on a blog and heard Rush Limbaugh talk about it.
On Truth and the Public Trust
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When an honest writer discovers an imposition it is his simple duty to strip it bare and hurl it down from its place of honor, no matter who suffers by it; any other course would render him unworthy of the public confidence.
-Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad
The writer is best when he is the impostor’s worst enemy.
Image source courtesy of twainquotes.com
On Elections, Politics, and Human Nature
Posted by: | Comments“If we would learn what the human race really is at bottom, we need only observe it in election times.”
-Mark Twain, Autobiography
Elections reflect the highest ideals of society, executed by the lowest means of human nature.
On Party and Patriotism
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“No party holds the privilege of dictating to me how I shall vote. If loyalty to party is a form of patriotism, I am no patriot. If there is any valuable difference between a monarchist and an American, it lies in the theory that the American can decide for himself what is patriotic and what isn’t. I claim that difference. I am the only person in the sixty millions that is privileged to dictate my patriotism.”
-Mark Twain
Party politics is the reality of our political process, but does it always foster a truly patriotic spirit?
Nobody, whether Democrat, Republican, or any other political party, can decree what constitutes individual patriotism. For better or worse, that is left for me to decide – but only for me. You’ll have to decide for yourself, as will what is now some 300 million other American souls.
What a messy business this American republic is. And when it works, what a miracle.
On Frustration with Democrats in Congress
Posted by: | Comments“Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But I repeat myself.”
–Mark Twain
Suppose the Democrats started to effectively engage the Bush White House on the abuse, incompetence, and deception of the past seven years.
But then I’d just be dreaming.
On the Value of Questioning Authority
Posted by: | Comments“Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure defense”
-Mark Twain
Any power, belief, idea, or proclamation can only prove its worth through contempt and, if worthwhile and right, redemption.
It is by trial that our characters, and our ideas, or forged.
On “Patriotism” and the Conscience of a Nation
Posted by: | Comments“We have a bastard Patriotism, a sarcasm, a burlesque; but we have no such thing as a public conscience. Politically we are just a joke.”
We get the leaders we deserve, we rally around them and question the patriotism of anyone with the moral courage to point out that the emperor has no clothes.
This is not patriotism, and far worse avowed disloyalty, for it calls itself something for which it is not.
Did I mention that we get the leaders we deserve?