“The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.”
-Mark Twain, Following the Equator
For the Texas Board of Education, America wasn’t founded on the principal of the separation of church and state, every good capitalist is actually a free-market conservative, McCarthy wasn’t really that bad, and Thomas Jefferson had nothing to do with inspiring revolution in 18th-century America.
And the ink dries on prejudice in Texas.
“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.
“He is now fast rising from affluence to poverty.”
-Mark Twain
Unmatched is the speed with which all illusions of growing affluence disappear into oblivion.
Don’t look. It won’t make you any richer.
“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.
“Statistics show that we lose more fools on this day than in all the other days of the year put together. This proves, by the number left in stock, that one Fourth of July per year is now inadequate, the country has grown so.”
-Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar
Pass me that M-80 would ya’?
God Bless America
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
“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.
”The rain …falls upon the just and the unjust alike; a thing which would not happen if I were superintending the rain’s affairs. No, I would rain softly and sweetly on the just, but if I caught a sample of the unjust outdoors I would drown him.”
-Mark Twain
It doesn’t always seem as if everyone gets the justice they deserve, whether it be the sweet justice of a life well-lived or the terrible kind descending down upon the heads of the mean and wicked.
We may not always think it right, but justice, like the rain, will find its way – and will fall upon everyone’s head eventually.
“There isn’t a rich man in your vast city who doesn’t perjure himself every year before the tax board.”
-Mark Twain
Many a tall tale will be told today.
“We build a fire in a powder magazine, then double the fire department to put it out. We inflame wild beasts with the smell of blood, and then innocently wonder at the wave of brutal appetite that sweeps the land as a consequence.”
-Mark Twain, 1907 speech
It’s the same old story. Playing with fire and wondering why it burns.