70 Best Mark Twain Quotes About Change to Inspire Personal Growth

Nothing remains the same.

We are chameleons, and our partialities and prejudices change places with an easy and blessed facility, and we are soon wonted to the change and happy in it.

Change is the handmaiden Nature requires to do her miracles with.

What, then, is the true gospel of consistency? Change. Who is the really consistent man? The man who changes. Since change is the law of his being, he cannot be consistent if he stick in a rut.

I’m in favor of progress; it’s change I don’t like.

In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.

Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.

The altar cloth of one aeon is the doormat of the next.

Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.

It is wiser to find out than to suppose.

Hardly a man in the world has an opinion upon morals, politics, or religion which he got otherwise than through his associations and sympathies.

If work were so pleasant, the rich would keep it for themselves.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

It’s not what you don’t know that kills you, it’s what you know for sure that ain’t true.

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as much as you please.

Give every day a chance to become the most beautiful day in your life.

The two most important days of your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.

The most permanent lessons in morals are those which come not of book teaching but of experience.

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn no other way.

I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is I can’t find anybody who can tell me what they want.

Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.

The secret of getting ahead is getting started.

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.

The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.

In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.

All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure.

It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.

Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. The man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

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.

Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.

You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

Comparison is the death of joy.

There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.

Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.

Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn’t.

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter, tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.

Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.

Wrinkles should merely indicate where the smiles have been.

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.

Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.

Classic – a book which people praise and don’t read.

Books are for people who wish they were somewhere else.

Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.

Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.

Life is short. Break the rules. Forgive quickly. Kiss slowly. Love truly. Laugh uncontrollably. Never regret anything that makes you smile.

Action speaks louder than words, but not nearly as often.

The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.

Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.

Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.

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

God created war so that Americans would learn geography.

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.

Substitute damn every time you are inclined to write very; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

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

I did not attend his funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.

But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?

What would men be without women? Scarce, sir, mighty scarce.