The blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholder's moral perceptions are
known and conceded the world over; and a priveleged class, an aristocracy, is
but a band of slaveholders under another name.
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Any kind of royalty, however modified, any kind of aristocracy, however pruned,
is rightly an insult.
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
We have to be despised by somebody whom we regard as above us or we are not
happy; we have to have somebody to worship and envy or we cannot be content.
In America we manifest this in all the ancient and customary ways. In public
we scoff at titles and hereditary privilege but privately we hanker after them,
and when we get a chance we buy them for cash and a daughter.
- Mark Twain in Eruption
We are intensely democratic, and much given to mocking at royalties and aristocracies,
but privately we have that hankering after them and worship of them which has
never been absent from any section of the human race. We love to look at photographs
of princes and princelings and dukes and duchesses, greatly preferring them
to any other kind of pictures. Our illustrated papers and magazines know this
and they keep this appetite liberally fed. The source of this adulation of ours
is the same that it is all over the world-envy; envy of the conspicuous. An
American girl would rather marry a title than an angel.
- Bishop Speech, written between 5 October and 17 October 1907. It is not known
if the speech was ever delivered. Published in Mark Twain Speaking, edited
by Paul Fatout.
Like all the other nations, we worship money and the possessors of it- they
being our aristocracy, and we have to have one. We like to read about rich people
in the papers; the papers know it, and they do their best to keep this appetite
liberally fed.
- Mark Twain in Eruption
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