Eleven Mark Twain Quotes To Start Your Day

No question Mark Twain was one of America's great wits. Do you think he would have hosted a television show had he lived in the latter part of the last century? When I read some of these quotes, especially the latter ones on this page, I can't help but think of Groucho. His advice for writers is as pointed and spot on as his observations about life. It's interesting how Twain's observations and witticisms never go out of style.

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”

“God created war so that Americans would learn geography.”

“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.”

“If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed.”

“Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.”

“Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times.”

“A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.”

“A gentleman is someone who knows how to play the banjo and doesn't.”

“There is nothing so annoying as having two people talking when you're busy interrupting.”

“Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”

You can read all the Mark Twain quotes you want here at Goodreads. I just wanted to help get you started, in the event that it's been a while. 

Uprooted: Part XXII

On Saturdays I have been sharing serially the story of the peoples of Estonia through the eyes of a man with a crippled leg name Ralph Kand whom I met two decades ago on a beach in Duluth. The book, if completed, will be called Uprooted. 

AMERICANS: FIRST ENCOUNTER

One day without warning, a half dozen German soldiers burst into the corridor. With a loud clanking of keys they began unlocking the cells, shouting, yanking prisoners from their cells and escorting them out. "What is this?" Ralph asked Franz quietly. There was a scuffle with one prisoner but then a more jubilant tone was being passed along down the row of cells.

"We're being released," Franz said.

Upstairs Ralph and the other prisoners were ushered to a makeshift desk where German police processed their release papers, then escorted them to a room full of shelves where their belongings had been stored. The process was tedious and Ralph complained.

“Don’t be a brute. We’re a civilized people,” the Nazi police officer said. “Keep your head.”

The officer led Ralph into the cage, which was now half emptied. His pack was small but there were valuables he hoped to hold on to, most importantly the photos of his family, mother, cousins, brother, and Eitsi, his lost love. He searched briefly along the back of the room then scanned the compartments above, recognizing it as soon as he saw it. His head jerked back and his mouth opened as if to utter some ejaculation of surprise and joy. But there was no sound other than the internal sigh of relief.

The officer took firm hold of his arm. “Is that it?”

Ralph nodded, turned and left the cage. Moments later he was on the street. He stood watching the chaotic scene of prisoners dispersing in various directions. There were some with nowhere to go, and others bound for home.

Across the square he saw the shattered courthouse. He could see other building had been smashed during the past months of bombing as well.

Franz jogged over to him and put his hand on Ralph’s shoulder. “I’m off to Munich. Looks like the war’s nearing an end. Good luck with the Americans.”

Ralph listened. Franz explained that the Nazis were clearing the jails so that the police could help in the fight and not be bogged down with feeding prisoners and cleaning cells. The Allies were on the ground and heading this way.

Ralph perked up at this last bit of news. The two men walked down the stairs to the street.

“Auf wiedersehn,” Franz said as he gave Ralph a bear hug.

“Auf wiedersehn.”

Ralph turned and began making his way west. Within the hour he was in a rural area sprinkled with farms and rolling hills. It was spring and green, and at times easy to forget about the war. Here and there he saw small groups of people walking along the road with their own packs, or occasionally suitcases.

Mid-afternoon as he limped westward along a stretch of winding road the German army suddenly appeared, marching directly toward him on the same road. He kept walking on the shoulder as the soldiers marched briskly the opposite direction, almost frantically. There must have been 400 men or more, urgency compelling them to march as fast as able, the sound of boots slapping pavement breaking the peaceful quality of the countryside.

Suddenly, a cannon fired in the distance, the shell colliding with the column of men who immediately parted in a wild rush to the left and right sides of the road, opening Ralph’s vision to what was really happening. An American tank and accompanying soldiers was wending over the next rise around the bend.

Another shell crashed into the field and Ralph panicked. He was in the middle of a battlefield. A farmhouse across the way beckoned him and he ran as fast as he was able in the direction of the rural home. When he arrived an old German farmer stood in the door inviting others into the house and directing them to the basement. The gunfire and tank shells tore up the field where he had just been.

"Where are you from?" a woman said in German.

They were all seated on the floor around the perimeter of the room, about a dozen in all. "Czechoslovakia," a portly man said in a gravelly voice.

"Estonia," Ralph replied when she looked in his direction.

"You're a long ways from home."

"This is true," Ralph replied.

The skirmish outside lasted only a short time but no one dared move.After a while they heard noises upstairs. Doors opened, floorboards above their heads creaked. The door to the basement opened and Ralph could see a soldiers boots, legs then rifle entering their hiding place, a second behind him.

The American studied the group huddled there. They were searching for German soldiers, and when no one here fit the description the snapped the safeties on the guns into place and relaxed. "Speak English?" the one American said.

At first no one responded. "I speak a little English," Ralph replied.

"Ein bischen?" the American said with a laugh that broke the tension in the room. "Tell them their free to go. We're just looking for soldiers," he said, addressing Ralph.

Ralph explained this to the others in German. They each climbed to their feet and, led by the soldiers, made their way upstairs.

From the porch Ralph surveyed the damage. Quite a few bodies lay out on the open field. The farmer invited everyone to stay for a meal and spend the night if needful. The Americans left to catch up with their company.

CONTINUED

Propaganda Revisited

The word propaganda is actually a Latin word that was originally introduced in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV in response to the global rise of Protestantism. He formed an “Office for the Propagation of the Faith” to oversee Catholic mission efforts in the New World. (“Congregatio de propaganda fide”) It is interesting that global forces and fears were the impetus behind these propaganda efforts, much like modern times.

During World War I propaganda became a secret weapon of our own government to turn public opinion against the Germans in order to prepare our nation for war. Before the war the word propaganda was so insignificant that it didn’t even have an entry in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica. During the war it was little understood how much the media served as mouthpiece for the propaganda machinery that demonized “the Huns” and portrayed the Germans as Prussian barbarians.

In 1928 Edward Bernays, in a book titled Propaganda, argued that propaganda was a good thing, a useful tool for the ruling elite because the masses needed to be moved. They were sheep too dumb to know what was best for them without guidance. The government and the media should work together to create an appetite for the right goods, services, leaders. It was a positive, not a perjorative.

Within months of publication of this landmark manual the word was already getting a bad reputation. George Creel, in another book, revealed that our own U.S. Office of War Information had heavy-handedly practiced the art of public manipulation to seed the war effort. When the public learned they had been hoodwinked, manipulated by falsehood and innuendo, lies, exaggeration and half-truths, … well, the word had to be replaced by more positive terminology.

The new term is Public Relations. And what PR professionals practice is called “spin.”

The problem is, no one knows anymore what is true and what is spin. Hence we live in an era of disillusionment and distrust.

During World War I it was said that Germans always lie, Americans always tell the truth. When later Americans learned their country told them half truths and outright lies, it was a bitter pill to swallow.

Bernays used his book as a stepping stone to advance his own career as a publicist. He ultimately achieved the stature he desired, becoming a mouthpiece for Big Tobacco for a spell as well as for General Electric in what amounted to helping it achieve a “stranglehold on America’s electric power” in “the largest peacetime propaganda drive in peacetime history.” (M.C.Miller)

His crowning achievement was the work he did in Latin America during the 1950s on behalf of the United Fruit Company wherein he paved the way for the CIA overthrow of the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz. To our shame as a nation, we did not dig into the motivations of UFC or the underlying truths behind what was really going on there in Guatemala, or Costa Rica. The resulting damage to U.S. credibility in the region lingered for decades.

In the Viet Nam era, we find similar tactics. And post 9/11… well, who knows where the truth goes when you have all these think tanks and spin doctors ever so busy weaving words into mesmerizing pinwheel spells and snapdragon daisywheels of distraction.

Words can serve as a conveyor of truth, but in a world where they so often veil and betray truth how does one know? How can one be sure? The imperative is learning how to hear, how to listen, how to weigh the value of what is spoken and written... how to separate the darkness from the light and give order to the chaos. In short, how to discern.