“It is the habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not desire.”

Still hope leads men to venture; and no one ever yet put himself in peril without the inward conviction that he would succeed in his design.

It is frequently a misfortune to have very brilliant men in charge of affairs. They expect too much of ordinary men.

History is Philosophy teaching by example.

The cause of all these evils was the lust for power arising from greed and ambition; and from these passions proceeded the violence of parties once engaged in contention.

The sufferings that fate inflicts on us should be borne with patience, what enemies inflict with manly courage.

When will there be justice in Athens? There will be justice in Athens when those who are not injured are as outraged as those who are.

I think the two things most opposed to good counsel are haste and passion; haste usaully goes hand in hand with folly, passion with coarseness and narrowness of mind.

He passes through life most securely who has least reason to reproach himself with complaisance toward his enemies.

The strong do what they have to do and the weak accept what they have to accept.

Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can.

I dread our own mistakes more than the enemy’s intentions.

Wars spring from unseen and generally insignificant causes, the first outbreak being often but an explosion of anger.

Love of power, operating through greed and through personal ambition, was the cause of all these evils.

The secret of happiness is freedom and the secret of freedom is courage.

It is useless to attack men who could not be controlled even if conquered, while failure would leave us in an even worse position.

We Greeks believe that a man who takes no part in public affairs is not merely lazy, but good for nothing.

I have no desire to take all black people back to Africa; there are blacks who are no good here and will likewise be no good there.

When a man makes his thoughts pure, he no longer desires impure food.

A man is rational in proportion as his intelligence informs and controls his desires.

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years.

One of the most powerful of all our passions is the desire to be admired and respected.

Memory is not your enemy. The real enemy is your desires, chasing your past lamenting over and over.

You are all burning desires and questions with no answers.

I remind myself what I desire in another is myself undiscovered.