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

September 9, 2025
The art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to the other.
November 24, 2025
America is still a government of the naïve, by the naïve, and for the naïve.
April 9, 2025
00:50
…it is a denial of the entire experience of the twentieth century
Page 41 of 123