Quotes Library

December 4, 2025

Reader, suppose you were an idiot; and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (“Mark Twain”) (1835–1910), American writer, in Des MacHale, Wit (1997), p.198

Assuming you are an elected politician, do any of your colleagues qualify as idiots? Assuming you are a wannabe, does Twain induce second thoughts? How do you propose to demonstrate you are not an idiot, once elected?

The attention paid in today’s media (both traditional and social) to what in years past would have been obscure members of Congress allows many more people to see the truth in Twain’s statement.


More Quotes

February 8, 2026
01:29
Being right, in and of itself, is meaningless…we have to win. And we have to deliver.
April 22, 2025
Politics demands a certain rhetoric. It does not demand moral action to fit the rhetoric.
January 13, 2025
00:52
Politics and the fate of mankind are formed by men without ideals and without greatness.
Page 22 of 122