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Directory of Mark Twain's maxims, quotations, and various opinions:

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LOYALTY

Photo of Clemens
Photo of Clemens which became basis for
pen and ink sketch in
Century Magazine ads, 1893.

You see my kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions, or its office holders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death. To be loyal to rags, to shout for rags, to worship rags, to die for rags--this is loyalty to unreason, it is pure animal; it belongs to monarchy, was invented by monarchy; let monarchy keep it.
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

The first thing I want to teach is disloyalty till they get used to disusing that word loyalty as representing a virtue. This will beget independence--which is loyalty to one's best self and principles, and this is often disloyalty to the general idols and fetishes.
- Mark Twain's Notebook

Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world--and never will.
- "Consistency" speech, essay

Loyalty is a word which has worked vast harm; for it has been made to trick men into being "loyal" to a thousand iniquities, whereas the true loyalty should have been to themselves--in which case there would have ensured a rebellion, and the throwing off of that deceptive yoke.
- Mark Twain's Notebook

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