Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can. - What Is Man?
...the smallest minds and the selfishest souls and the cowardliest hearts that God makes. - Letter fragment, 1891
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. - Mark Twain, a Biography
Congressman is the trivialist distinction for a full grown man. - Notebook #14, 11/1877 - 7/1878
All Congresses and Parliaments have a kindly feeling for idiots, and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity. - Mark Twain's Autobiography; also in Mark Twain in Eruption
The lightning there is peculiar; it is so convincing, that when it strikes a thing it doesn't leave enough of that thing behind for you to tell whether--Well, you'd think it was something valuable, and a Congressman had been there.
- Mark Twain's Speeches, "The Weather"
It is the foreign element that commits our crimes. There is no native criminal class except Congress. - More Maxims of Mark, Johnson, 1927
Whiskey is carried into committee rooms in demijohns and carried out in demagogues. - Notebook, 1868
...I never can think of Judas Iscariot without losing my temper. To my mind Judas Iscariot was nothing but a low, mean, premature, Congressman. - "Foster's Case", New York Tribune, 3/10/1873
"Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was on 'Meet the Press' yesterday. And he said that Barack Obama is more analytical than President Bush. Well, there's a shock, huh? I think Tickle Me Elmo is more analytical than President Bush." --Jay Leno
"Actually, this past weekend, the Conservative Political Action Conference picked Mitt Romney over Sarah Palin in their straw poll to be the next presidential candidate. Yeah. Well, it's kind of interesting. I mean, one is just a pretty face, obsessed with makeup and hair. And the other, of course, is the governor of Alaska." --Jay Leno
"How many watched the Obama speech on Tuesday night? If you didn't see it, I'll give you the short version. We're completely broke, and deeply in debt, but we're going to do a bank rescue, universal healthcare, give everybody a college education, have a bigger war in Afghanistan, cut the deficit in half, and cure cancer. We were this close to universal blow jobs." --Bill Maher
"Despite the recession, Microsoft is planning to open stores to compete with Apple. Microsoft says that they'll be just like the Apple stores, except the staff will freeze when you ask them a question." --Jimmy Fallon
