“We employ the mind to rule, the body to serve.”

Get good counsel before you begin; and when you have decided, act promptly.

Ambition drove many men to become false; to have one thought locked in the breast, another ready on the tongue.

It is sweet to surve one country by deeds, and it is not absurd to surve her by words.

Enough words, little wisdom.

Everything that rises sets, and everything that grows, grows old.

To someone seeking power, the poorest man is the most useful.

No grief reaches the dead.

By union the smallest states thrive. By discord the greatest are destroyed.

Just to stir things up seemed a great reward in itself.

All who consult on doubtful matters, should be void of hatred, friendship, anger, and pity.

When the prizes fall to the lot of the wicked, you will not find many who are virtuous for virtue’s sake.

By the wicked the good conduct of others is always dreaded.

Deliberate before you begin; but, having carefully done so, execute with vigour.

The glory of wealth and of beauty is fleeting and frail; virtue is illustrious and everlasting.

It is impossible that there should be so much providence in the last details, and none in the first principles. Then the arts of prophecy and of healing, which are part of the cosmos, come of the good providence of the Gods.

All men who would surpass the other animals should do their best not to pass through life silently like the beasts whom nature made prone, obedient to their bellies.

The real and effectual discipline which is exercised over a workman is that of his customers. It is the fear of losing their employment which restrains his frauds and corrects his negligence.

We cannot afford to spend millions and millions over nuclear arms when there is poverty and unemployment all around us.

Ask any rich man of common prudence to which of the two sorts of people he has lent the greater part of his stock, to those who, he thinks, will employ it profitably, or to those who will spend it idly, and he will laugh at you for proposing the question.

When profit diminishes, merchants are very apt to complain that trade decays; though the diminution of profit is the natural effect of its prosperity, or of a greater stock being employed in it than before.

Fear is in almost all cases a wretched instrument of government, and ought in particular never to be employed against any order of men who have the smallest pretensions to independency.

By employing the intelligence of natural systems we can create industry, buildings, even regional plans that see nature and commerce not as mutually exclusive but mutually coexisting.

I’m just what America needs: another unemployed black man.

The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy.