Why was the human race created? Or at least why wasn't something creditable
created in place of it? God had His opportunity; He could have made a reputation.
But no, He must commit this grotesque folly--a lark which must have cost him
a regret or two when He came to think it over & observe effects.
- Letter to W. D. Howells, 1/25/1900
As to the human race. There are many pretty and winning things about the human
race. It is perhaps the poorest of all the inventions of all the gods but it
has never suspected it once. There is nothing prettier than its naive and complacent
appreciation of itself. It comes out frankly and proclaims without bashfulness
or any sign of a blush that it is the noblest work of God. It has had a billion
opportunities to know better, but all signs fail with this ass. I could say
harsh things about it but I cannot bring myself to do it--it is like hitting
a child.
- Autobiographical dictation, June 25,1906 (reprinted in Hudson Review,
Autumn 1963)
There isn't any way to libel the human race.
- Mark Twain in Eruption
Etiquette requires us to admire the human race.
- More Maxims of Mark, Johnson, 1927
Such is the human race. Often it does seem such a pity that Noah and his party
did not miss the boat.
- Christian Science
The human race consists of the damned and the ought-to-be damned.
- Notebook, 1898
The human race consists of the dangerously insane and such as are not.
- Mark Twain's Notebook, 1902-1903
Is the human race a joke? Was it devised and patched together in a dull time
when there was nothing important to do?
- "The Czar's Soliloquy"
The symbol of the race ought to be a human being carrying an ax, for every human
being has one concealed about him somewhere, and is always seeking the opportunity
to grind it.
- Mark Twain, a Biography
I have been reading the morning paper. I do it every morning--knowing well that
I shall find in it the usual depravities and basenesses and hypocrisies and
cruelties that make up civilization, and cause me to put in the rest of the
day pleading for the damnation of the human race. I cannot seem to get my prayers
answered, yet I do not despair.
- Letter to W. D. Howells, 4/2/1899
Damn these human beings; if I had invented them I would go hide my head in a
bag.
- Letter to W. D. Howells, 1899
We all belong to the nasty stinking little human race, & of course it is
not nice for God's beloved vermin to scoff at each other... Oh, we are a nasty
little lot--& to think there are people who would like to save us &
continue us. It won't happen if I have any influence.
- Letter to W. D. Howells, 4/2/1899
In a book by Charles Darwin, Twain had written: "Can any plausible
excuse be furnished for the crime of creating the human race?"
- The New York Times, "Hartford Museum Purchases Barrels Full of
Twain's Old Books," July 31, 1997
I have damaged my intellect trying to imagine why a man should want to invent
a repeating clock, and how another man could be found to lust after it and buy
it. The man who can guess these riddles is far on the way to guess why the human
race was invented--which is another riddle which tires me.
- Letter to Henry H. Rogers, 9/24/1894
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