Mark Twain Quotes
That is a simple rule, and easy to remember. When I, a thoughtful and unblessed Presbyterian, examine the Koran, I know that beyond any question every Mohammedan is insane; not in all things, but in religious matters.
Twain, Mark. Christian Science. Harper & Brothers, 1907.
In 1877 Wasburn was dropped from the List of Ministers by the Unitarian Church. He had become very critical of organized and orthodox religion of all kinds.
In the middle of 2010, this organization was running public utility bus ads in major American cities.
A videotape of this response was used by Kennedy as a campaign TV ad. American history had been full of anti-Catholic prejudice and it was responsible for the Presidential loss of Al Smith. Kennedy hit the issue directly betting that America had become more tolerant. He was right but he still lost several states because of religious bigotry.
Kennedy was a Roman Catholic and there was a great deal of anti-Catholic prejudice in the country then. Al Smith, the only Catholic who had run for the Presidency, was defeated with almost all his opposition coming from anti-Catholic forces appealing to the then popular prejudice that if a Catholic became President, the Pope and the Vatican would be running America. Richard Nixon, a master politician with few scruples, cleverly kept raising the religious question in the voters minds by saying that he would not make Kennedy’s religion and issue of the campaign. Kennedy barely won.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was lauded as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," and William Faulkner called him "the father of American literature". His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), the latter often called "The Great American Novel".