It is strange the way the ignorant and inexperienced so often and so undeservedly succeed when the informed and the experienced fail.

If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it.

Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

The New York papers have long known that no large question is ever really settled until I have been consulted.

My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water.

Gratitude is a debt which usually goes on accumulating like blackmail; the more you pay, the more is exacted.

I will now claim - until dispossesed - that I was the first person in the world to apply the typewriter to literature. ... The early machine was full of caprices, full of defects- devilish ones. It had as many immoralities as the machine of today has virtues. After a year or two I found that it was degrading my character, so I thought I would give it to Howells. ... He took it home to Boston, and my morals began to improve, but his have never recovered.