Mark Twain Quotes

Let us consider that we are all insane. It will explain us to each other. It will unriddle many riddles

What is grand is necessarily obscure to weak men. That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care.

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.

I doubt if a single individual could be found from the whole of mankind free from some form of insanity. The only difference is one of degree. A man who sees a gourd and takes it for his wife is called insane because this happens to very few people.

The fact that something is actually understandable and relatable doesn't mean that it's unsophisticated or banal. It just means that it's crystal-clear. And if you can't explain it, that doesn't necessarily mean it's so brilliant that ordinary mortals can't fathom it. It might just mean that it makes no sense.

I do not feel happy when a collection is understood too well.

Simplicity before understanding is simplistic; simplicity after understanding is simple.

Any effort... to make the obscure obvious is likely to be unappealing, for the penalty of failure is confusion while the reward of success is banality.

It is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated.

The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

It is not at all simple to understand the simple.

I admire writers who can make complicated things simple, but my own talent has been to make simple things complicated.

People want to ignore what they can't understand. They're looking for logic at any cost.

Find the heart of it. Make the complex simple, and you can achieve mastery.

Between the semi-educated, who offer simplistic answers to complex questions, and the overeducated, who offer complicated answers to simple questions, it is a wonder that any questions get satisfactorily answered at all.

Not to create confusion in what is clear, but to throw light on what is obscure.

To ask for an explanation is to explain the obscure by the more obscure.

If things were simple, word would have gotten around.

It is very hard to be simple enough to be good.

Oh! I'm stupid as well as insane.

When I asked my mother, ‘how do I tell people about you’ her answer was ‘tell the truth’. But of course, the truth is never simple.

My natural tendency is to complicate everything--and then to spray words and ideas onto everything afterwards. I've had to develop the habit of keeping things simple.

Erroneous views and presumptuousness send a talent to the insane asylum.

Intelligence complicates. Wisdom simplifies.

I must try, however, as best I can, although I am very conscious of the fact that our feelings and strivings are often contradictory and obscure and that they cannot be expressed in easy and simple formulas.