Mark Twain Religion Quotes

#1. It is a good and gentle religion, but inconvenient.

Mark Twain

#2. 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

#3. Religion consists in a set of things which the average man thinks he believes and wishes he was certain of.

Mark Twain

#4. Surely the ass who invented the first religion ought to be the first ass damned

Mark Twain

#5. Italy is the home of art and swindling; home of religion and moral rottenness

Mark Twain

#6. I would not read the proof of one of my books for any fair & reasonable sum whatever, if I could get out of it. The proof-reading on the P & Pauper cost me the last rags of my religion.

Mark Twain

#7. Apparently one of the most uncertain things in the world is the funeral of a religion.

Mark Twain

#8. Man is kind enough when he is not excited by religion

Mark Twain

#9. In your country and mine we should have the privilege of making fun of this kind of morality, but it would be unkind to do it here.Many of these people have the reasoning faculty, but no one uses it in religious matters.

Mark Twain

#10. What a man wants with religion in these breadless times, surpasses my comprehension.

Mark Twain

#11. More men go to church than want to.

Mark Twain

#12. India has two million gods, and worships them all. In religion all other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire.

Mark Twain

#13. Blasphemy? No, it is not blashphemy. If God is as vast as that, he is above blasphemy; if he is as little as that, He is beneath it.

Mark Twain

#14. Heaven is the very last place to come to rest and don't you be afraid to bet on that!

Mark Twain

#15. The Koran does not permit Mohammedans to drink. Their natural instincts do not permit them to be moral. They say the Sultan has eight hundred wives. This almost amounts to bigamy.

Mark Twain

#16. When one reads Bibles, one is less surprised at what the Deity knows than at what He doesn't know.

Mark Twain

#17. In religion, India is the only millionaire ... the One land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for all the shows of all the rest of the globe combined.

Mark Twain

#18. Two things which are the peculiar domain of the heart, not the mind - politics and religion. He doesn't want to know the other side. He wants arguments and statistics for his own side, and nothing more.

Mark Twain

#19. Any established church is an established crime, an established slave pen.

Mark Twain

#20. [The Bible is] a mass of fables and traditions, mere mythology.

Mark Twain

#21. In light matters
matters of small consequence, like religion and politics and such things
he never acquired a conviction that could survive a disapproving remark from a cat.

Mark Twain

#22. The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.

Mark Twain

#23. We were good boys, good Presbyterian boys, and loyal and all that; anyway, we were good Presbyterian boys when the weather was doubtful; when it was fair, we did wander a little from the fold.

Mark Twain

#24. I do not know what we should do without the pulpit. We could better spare the sun-the moon, anyway.

Mark Twain

#25. Religion was invented when the first con man met the first fool.

Mark Twain

#26. The Jabalites ... They worship no god; and if we in goodness of heart do send a missionary to show them the way of life, they listen with respect to all he hath to say, and then they eat him. This doth tend to hinder the spread of light.

Mark Twain

#27. Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilt.

Mark Twain

#28. Each nation knowing it has the only true religion and the only sane system of government, each despising all the others, each an ass and not suspecting it.

Mark Twain

#29. The true pioneer of civilization is not the newspaper, not religion, not the railroad - but whiskey!

Mark Twain

#30. In God We Trust. I don't believe it would sound any better if it were true.

Mark Twain

#31. Grown people everywhere are always likely to cling to the religion they were brought up in.

Mark Twain

#32. Where is it written that if you don't like religion you are somehow disqualified from being a legitimate American? What was Mark Twain, a Russian?

Hendrik Hertzberg

#33. It is best to read the weather forecast before praying for rain.

Mark Twain

#34. He is in heaven now, and happy; or if not there, he bides in hell and is content; for in that place he will find neither abbot nor yet bishop.

Mark Twain

#35. The two Testaments are interesting, each in its own way. The Old one gives us a picture of these people's Deity as he was before he got religion, the other one gives us a picture of him as he appeared afterward.

Mark Twain

#36. Strange is the man who practices his religion.

Mark Twain

#37. To trust the God of the Bible is to trust an irascible, vindictive, fierce and ever fickle and changeful master.

Mark Twain

#38. Stripping away the irrational, the illogical, and the impossible, I am left with atheism. I can live with that.

Mark Twain

#39. 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

#40. The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven not man's.

Mark Twain

#41. I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey's.

Mark Twain

#42. Patriotism is merely a religion-love of country, worship of country, devotion to the country's flag and honor and welfare.

Mark Twain

#43. 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

#44. I am persuaded that a coldly-thought-out and independent verdict upon a fashion in clothes, or manners, or literature, or politics, or religion, or any other matter that is projected into the field of our notice and interest, is a most rare thing -- if it has indeed ever existed.

Mark Twain

#45. It is said, in this country, that if a man can arrange his religion so that it perfectly satisfies his conscience, it is not incumbent upon him to care whether the arrangement is satisfactory to anyone else or not.

Mark Twain

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

Mark Twain

#47. If I were to construct a God I would furnish Him with some way and qualities and characteristics which the Present lacks.

Mark Twain

#48. Ignorance is not not knowin' - Ignorance is knowin' what ain't so.

Mark Twain

#49. Man is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight

Mark Twain