“Healthy scepticism is the basis of all accurate observation.”

Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing. It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different.

There are always some lunatics about. It would be a dull world without them.

One must wait till it comes.

It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but that you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.

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.

A woman’s guess is much more accurate than a man’s certainty.

I think the city of Washington itself is insular to a certain extent. You have to get out in the country to realize what is going on and discover that the perceptions in Washington aren’t necessarily accurate.

No person will deny that the highest degree of attainable accuracy is an object to be desired, and it is generally found that the last advances towards precision require a greater devotion of time, labour, and expense, than those which precede them.

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

Timing and accuracy beats power.

Simply put, you believe that things or people make you unhappy, but this is not accurate. You make yourself unhappy.

Vulnerability is our most accurate measurement of courage.

Eyes are more accurate witnesses than ears.