“A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.”
Mark Twain and I by Opie Read
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Source: Mark Twain's Notebook (1935), p. 379
“Whiskey is for drinking. Water is for fighting over.”
It seems likely that the attribution to Twain is apocryphal. It is not listed as authentic on Twainquotes http://twainquotes.com/, and is not listed at all in either R. Ken Ramussen's The Quotable Mark Twain (1998) or David W. Barber's Quotable Twain (2002)
Misattributed
“I couldn't bear to think about it; and yet, somehow, I couldn't think about nothing else.”
Source: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
“The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.”
Mark Twain's Notebook (1935)
Source Undetermined in Everyone's Mark Twain (1972) compiled by Caroline Thomas Harnsberger, p. 161
Disputed
“Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.”
"The Chronicle of Young Satan" (ca. 1897–1900, unfinished), published posthumously in Mark Twain's Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (1969), ed. William Merriam Gibson ( pp. 165–166 http://books.google.com/books?id=LDvA2xcYZKcC&pg=PA165 in the 2005 paperback printing, ).
Source: The Mysterious Stranger and Other Curious Tales
Context: Your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon—laughter. Power, Money, Persuasion, Supplication, Persecution—these can lift at a colossal humbug,—push it a little—crowd it a little—weaken it a little, century by century: but only Laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of Laughter nothing can stand.
“There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist, except an old optimist.”
Variant: There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist, except an old optimist.
Source: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Source: The Innocents Abroad (1869), Ch. 61.
Context: The people of those foreign countries are very, very ignorant. They looked curiously at the costumes we had brought from the wilds of America. They observed that we talked loudly at table sometimes. They noticed that we looked out for expenses and got what we conveniently could out of a franc, and wondered where in the mischief we came from. In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.