Mark Twain Moral Quotations

The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.

It is curious - curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare

We must annex those people. We can afflict them with our wise and beneficent government. We can introduce the novelty of thieves, all the way up from street-car pickpockets to municipal robbers and Government defaulters, and show them how amusing it is to arrest them and try them and then turn them loose -- some for cash and some for ''political influence.'' We can make them ashamed of their simple and primitive justice. We can make that little bunch of sleepy islands the hottest corner on earth, and array it in the moral splendor of our high and holy civilization. Annexation is what the poor islanders need. ''Shall we to men benighted, the lamp of life deny?''

It is the creator of wrong; wrong cannot exist until Moral Sense brings it into being

We get our morals from books. I didn't get mine from books, but I know that morals do come from books- theoretically at least.

Morals consist of political morals, commercial morals, ecclesiastical morals, and morals.

I was born modest, but it didn't last.

The Moral Sense teaches us what is right, and how to avoid it-when unpopular.

Conscience, man's moral medicine chest.

Why is it that, among men, physical courage is a trait so plenteous yet moral courage is a trait so rare?

I have only one moral precept; never smoke more than five cigars at a time.