Mark Twain on Moral Courage

My Dear Sir:

But you are proceeding upon the superstition that Moral Courage and a Hankering to Learn the Truth are ingredients in the human being's makeup. Your premises being wild and foolish, you naturally and properly get wild and foolish results. If you will now reform, and in future proceed upon the sane and unchallengeable hypothesis that those two ingredients are on vacation in our race, and have been from the start, you will be able to account for some things which seem to puzzle you now.

Sincerely yours,

S. L. CLEMENS.
Riverdale-on-the-Hudson, Dec. 21, 1901.

"There are not enough morally brave men in stock. We are out of moral-courage material."
"United States of Lyncherdom"