Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it
Mark TwainRead
The silent colossal National Lie that is the support and confederate of all the tyrannies and shams and inequalities and unfairnesses that afflict the peoples — that is the one to throw bricks and sermons at.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote criticizes the societal norms that perpetuate tyranny and inequality, urging people to challenge these injustices.
Mark Twain's quote highlights the pervasive nature of societal falsehoods that support various unjust systems, emphasizing the need for individuals to confront these entrenched beliefs. It suggests that these 'silent colossal lies' allow various forms of tyranny and inequality to flourish, and that it is the responsibility of the people to actively resist and criticize these shams through both direct action ('throw bricks') and moral persuasion ('sermons').
Themes
SilenceTruthTyrannyInequalitySocial JusticeCriticism
In practice
Example use cases
During a social justice rally, this quote could highlight the need to speak out against systemic oppression.
More from Mark Twain
All quotes →The easy part of being an artist is figuring out the message that everyone else is ready to hear. The hard part is waiting for the proper lull to make the announcement.
Mark TwainRead
You can't reason with your heart; it has its own laws, and thumps about things which the intellect scorns.
Mark TwainRead
To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.
Mark TwainRead
Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.
Mark TwainRead
In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.
Mark TwainRead
Similar quotes
The appetite for power, even for universal power, is only insane when there is no possibility of indulging it; a man who sees the possibility opening before him and does not try to grasp it, even at the risk of destroying himself and his country, is either
Simone WeilRead
Yet food is something that is taken for granted by most world leaders despite the fact that more than half of the population of the world is hungry.
Norman BorlaugRead
Religion without humanity is very poor human stuff.
Sojourner TruthRead
Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.
Oscar WildeRead
Every man is the builder of a temple called his body.
Henry David ThoreauRead
I believe that my theory is correct; for whatever be the question upon which I am arguing, whether it be religious, philosophical, political, or economical; whether it affects well-being, morality, equality, right, justice, progress, responsibility, property, labor, exchange, capital, wages, taxes, population, credit, or Government; at whatever point of the scientific horizon I start from, I invariably come to the same thing—the solution of the social problem is in liberty.
Frederic BastiatRead