“Brisk talkers are generally slow thinkers.”

Many a truth is told in jest.

For to enter the palace of learning at the great gate requires an expense of time and forms, therefore men of much haste and little ceremony are content to get in by the back-door.

Perverseness is your whole defence.

Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own.

The bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.

Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.

Although the devil be the father of lies, he seems, like other great inventors, to have lost much of his reputation by the continual improvements that have been made upon him.

We of this age have discovered a shorter, and more prudent method to become scholars and wits, without the fatigue of reading or of thinking.

You should never be ashamed to admit you have been wrong. It only proves you are wiser today than yesterday.

If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.

Cruel people are ever cowards in emergency.

Books, the children of the brain.

Party is the madness of many for the gain of a few.

No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.

One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.

The worthiest people are the most injured by slander, as is the best fruit which the birds have been pecking at.

Fast is fine, but accuracy is final. In a gun fight. You need to take your time in a hurry.

When the stomach is full, it is easy to talk of fasting.

I’m one of those fellows so frightened of driving that I go 80 miles an hour – and the more frightened I get, the faster I go.

I am completely focused on being strong, riding fast, and enjoying myself. With the new generation of riders, only the chronometer counts. I need to be faster than them on track.

When I was 5 and playing against 11-year-olds, who were bigger, stronger, faster, I just had to figure out a way to play with them.

Never rest on your laurels. Nothing wilts faster than a laurel sat upon.

The rate of profit is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin.

Nothing wilts faster than laurels that have been rested upon.