“It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive.”

“We must have a religion — it goes without saying — but my idea is, to have it cut up into forty free sects, so that they will police each other, as had been the case in the United States in my time. Concentration of power in a political machine is bad; and and an Established Church is only a political machine; it was invented for that; it is nursed, cradled, preserved for that; it is an enemy to human liberty, and does no good which it could not better do in a split-up and scattered condition. That wasn’t law; it wasn’t gospel: it was only an opinion — my opinion, and I was only a man, one man: so it wasn’t worth any more than the pope’s — or any less, for that matter.”

“The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.”

“Steal a chicken if you get a chance, Huck, because if you don't want it, someone else does and a good deed ain't never forgotten.”

“When the Lord finished the world, he pronounced it good. That is what I said about my first work, too. But Time, I tell you, Time takes the confidence out of these incautious opinions. It is more than likely that He thinks about the world, now, pretty much as I think about the Innocents Abroad. The fact is, there is a trifle too much water in both.”

“Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.”

“All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure. ”