“In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.”

American writer, humorist, and essayist

Mark Twain was the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, an American writer, humorist, and essayist. He is best known for the novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and for a body of work that helped define American writing in the late 19th century. His books also include A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and Pudd'nhead Wilson. He co-wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today with Charles Dudley Warner. Twain's work is marked by wit, social satire, and a sharp eye for American life.