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

June 5, 2025
00:31
It is a great folly to offend many if you only want to insult one man.
July 16, 2025
The model of a modern Prime Minister would be a kind of grotesque composite freak
March 13, 2025
Those who exercise power and determine policy are generally men whose minds have been formed by events twenty or thirty years before.
Page 79 of 123