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Your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon—laughter. Power, Money, Persuasion, Supplication, Persecution—these can lift at a colossal humbug,—push it a little—crowd it a little—weaken it a little, century by century: but only Laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of Laughter nothing can stand.

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Source, in full

"The Chronicle of Young Satan" (ca. 1897–1900, unfinished), published posthumously in Mark Twain's Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (1969), ed. William Merriam Gibson (pp. 165–166 in the 2005 paperback printing, ISBN 0520246950)

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More quotes by Mark Twain

Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest.

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889)

If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—'tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.

Biographies are but clothes and buttons of the man — the biography of the man himself cannot be written.

Mark Twain's Autobiography (1924)

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Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.

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Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.

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Care to our coffin adds a nail, no doubt,
And every grin so merry draws one out.

John Wolcot

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Mark Twain (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.