Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.
What makes this genuinely unsettling is that Twain isn't counseling dishonesty—he's describing the prerequisite for it. A charlatan who doesn't know the facts simply looks foolish; one who does can convince anyone, because distortion requires intimate knowledge of truth to be persuasive. You see this constantly in modern discourse: the most effective misleading arguments come from people who clearly *did* their homework first, then selectively deployed it. The quote matters because it exposes why educated advocates of false causes are far more dangerous than ignorant ones.
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
Aristotle“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”
Lao Tzu“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a great deal of it.”
Seneca“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it mean...”
Steve Jobs