Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it
Mark TwainRead
It liberates the vandal to travel-you never saw a bigoted, opinionated, stubborn, narrow-minded, self-conceited, almighty mean man in your life but he had stuck in one place since he was born and thought God made the world and dyspepsia and bile for his especial comfort and satisfaction.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote criticizes those who are narrow-minded and stagnant in their views, suggesting that travel can broaden one's understanding and reduce bigotry.
Mark Twain's quote highlights the connection between travel and personal growth. It suggests that individuals who are constrained by their own limited perspectives tend to remain in one place, believing the world revolves around them. In contrast, traveling exposes people to diverse cultures and ideas, which can alleviate narrow-mindedness and foster open-mindedness and understanding.
Themes
TravelBigotryNarrow-MindednessGrowthUnderstanding
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech about cultural awareness, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of travel in combating ignorance.
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
A violent order is disorder; and a great disorder is an order. These two things are one.
Wallace StevensRead
Very notable was his distinction between coarseness and vulgarity, coarseness, revealing something; vulgarity, concealing something.
E. M. ForsterRead
What sort of truths are they that the majority usually supports? They are truths that are of such advanced age that they are beginning to break up. And if a truth is as old as that, it is also in a fair way to become a lie, gentlemen.
Henrik IbsenRead
On their deathbed men will speak true, they say.
J. R. R. TolkienRead
The common element in all the special forms of contemplation is the loving, yearning, affirming bent toward that happiness which is the same as God Himself, and which is the aim and purpose of all that happens in the world.
Josef PieperRead
Puritanism, believing itself quick with the seed of religious liberty, laid, without knowing it, the egg of democracy.
James Russell LowellRead