Mark Twain Quotes About Church

• So much blood has been shed by the Church because of an omission from the Gospel: “Ye shall be indifferent as to what your neighbor's religion is.” Not merely tolerant of it, but indifferent to it. Divinity is claimed for many religions; but no religion is great enough or divine enough to add that new law to its code.

  Mark Twain

  Religious, Blood, Law

  "Complete Works of Mark Twain".

• Most people can't bear to sit in church for an hour on Sundays. How are they supposed to live somewhere very similar to it for eternity?

  Mark Twain

  Death, Atheist, Sunday

• Nothing agrees with me. If I drink coffee, it gives me dyspepsia; if I drink wine, it gives me the gout; if I go to church, it gives me dysentery.

  Mark Twain

  Coffee, Wine, Giving

• A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows.

  Mark Twain

  Religious, Atheist, Believe

  Mark Twain (2015). “Bite-Size Twain: Wit and Wisdom from the Literary Legend”, p.55, St. Martin's Press

• The so-called Christian nations are the most enlightened and progressive ... but in spite of their religion, not because of it. The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetic in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve. And every step in astronomy and geology ever taken has been opposed by bigotry and superstition. The Greeks surpassed us in artistic culture and in architecture five hundred years before Christian religion was born.

  Mark Twain

  Christian, Taken, Biblical

• No church property is taxed and so the infidel and the atheist and the man without religion are taxed to make up the deficit.

  Mark Twain

  Atheist, Men, Church

  Mark Twain (194?). “Mark Twain's notebook”

• The Church worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood. Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One doesn't know whether to laugh or to cry. Who discovered that there was no such thing as a witch - the priest, the parson? No, these never discover anything.

  Mark Twain

  God, Christian, Army

  "Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations".

• The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetics in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve.

  Mark Twain

  Biblical, Discovery, Innovation

  Quoted in Albert B. Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography (1912)

• The church is always trying to get other people to reform, it might not be a bad idea to reform itself a little, by way of example

  Mark Twain

  Religious, Ideas, Always Trying

  Mark Twain (2016). “A Tramp Abroad”, p.241, Xist Publishing

• Concentration of power in a political machine is bad; and an Established Church is only a political machine; it was invented for that; it is nursed, cradled, preserved for that; it is an enemy to human liberty, and does no good which it could not better do in a split-up and scattered condition.

  Mark Twain

  Religious, Political, Enemy

  Mark Twain (1889). “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court”, p.142, Createspace Independent Pub

• There warn't anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there warn't any lock on the door, and hogs likes a puncheon floor in summer-time because it's cool. If you notice, most folks don't go to church only when they've got to; but a hog is different.

  Mark Twain

  Summer, Doors, Two

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain's Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn: The Original Text Edition”, p.352, NewSouth Books

• In all the ages the Roman Church has owned slaves, bought and sold slaves, authorized and encouraged her children to trade in them. . . . There were the texts; there was no mistaking their meaning; . . . she was doing in all this thing what the Bible had mapped out for her to do. So unassailable was her position that in all the centuries she had no word to say against human slavery.

  Mark Twain

  Children, Religion, Age

• Alas! those good old days are gone, when a murderer could wipe the stain from his name and soothe his trouble to sleep simply by getting out his blocks and mortar and building an addition to a church.

  Mark Twain

  Block, Sleep, Names

• The choir always tittered and whispered all through the service. There was once a church choir that was not ill-bred, but I have forgotten where it was.

  Mark Twain

  Church Choir, Atheism, Forgotten

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain's Adventures of Tom Sawyer: The NewSouth Edition”, p.32, NewSouth Books

• I never made a success of a lecture delivered in a church yet. People are afraid to laugh in a church. They can't be made to do it in any possible way.

  Mark Twain

  People, Laughing, Church

  Mark Twain (1992). “Mark Twain's Letters, Volume 3: 1869”, p.35, Univ of California Press

• You may call a jay a bird. Well, so he is, in a measure--because he's got feathers on him, and don't belong to no church, perhaps;but otherwise he is just as much a human as you be. And I'll tell you for why. A jay's gifts and instincts, and feelings, and interests, cover the whole ground. A jay hasn't got any more principle than a Congressman.

  Mark Twain

  Bird, Feelings, Humanity

  Mark Twain (1994). “Tales, Speeches, Essays, and Sketches”, p.163, Penguin

• The reason most people don't go to church is because they've already been.

  Mark Twain

  Christian, People, Church

• The world has corrected the Bible. The church never corrects it; and also never fails to drop in at the tail of the procession-and take the credit of the correction.

  Mark Twain

  Church, Tails, Credit

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.25, Courier Corporation

• No God and no religion can survive ridicule. No political church, no nobility, no royalty or other fraud, can face ridicule in a fair field, and live.

  Mark Twain

  God, Political, Religion

• There is no family in America without a clock, and consequently there is no fair pretext for the usual Sunday medley of dreadful sounds that issues from our steeples.

  Mark Twain

  Sunday, America, Issues

  Mark Twain (2015). “A Tramp Abroad: Mark Twain's Collections”, p.155, 谷月社

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