“The chief proof of man’s real greatness lies in his perception of his own smallness.”

Healthy scepticism is the basis of all accurate observation.

The future was with Fate. The present was our own.

Skill is fine, and genius is splendid, but the right contacts are more valuable than either.

I am an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles.

It is with nations as it is with individuals. A book of history is a book of sermons.

The individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty.

What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence. The question is what can you make people believe you have done.

Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

I am not the law, but I represent justice so far as my feeble powers go.

The love of books is among the choicest gifts of the gods.

The devil’s agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not?

To a great mind, nothing is little.

Critics kind never mind! Critics flatter no matter! Critics blame all the same! Do your best damn the rest!

His Ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge.

As a rule, the more bizarre a thing is, the less mysterious it proves to be.

Throughout history, government has proved to be the chief instrument for thwarting man’s liberty.

One of the chief peculiarities of this treatise is the doctrine that the true electric current, on which the electromagnetic phenomena depend, is not the same thing as the current of conduction, but that the time-variation of the electric displacement must [also] be taken into account.

The chief philosophical value of physics is that it gives the mind something distinct to lay hold of, which, if you don’t, Nature at once tells you you are wrong.

The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words.

Of all the needs a book has the chief need is that it be readable.

The trouble was, if you were a chief you had to think, you had to be wise.

ISIS and Iran have declared war on America, and we need a commander in chief who will do everything necessary to keep our children safe.

As Chief Secretary to the Treasury, I aim to be the disrupter in chief.