"I have been reading the morning paper. I do it every morning -- well knowing that I shall find in it the usual depravities and basenesses and hypocrisies and cruelties that make up civilization ..."

from Mark Twain to William Dean Howells
in a letter dated April 6, 1899

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"... the government thenceforth made the sly and treacherous betrayal of weak republics its amusement, and the stealing of their lands and the assassination of their liberties its trade. This endeared it to the monarchies and despotisms, and admitted it to their society as a World Power. It lost its self-respect, but after a little ceased to be troubled by this detail."

from The Secret History of Eddypus, the World-Empire (1901, unfinished)
by Mark Twain