“It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.”

To understand the nature of the people one must be a prince, and to understand the nature of the prince, one must be of the people.

The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.

For among other evils caused by being disarmed, it renders you contemptible; which is one of those disgraceful things which a prince must guard against.

I’m not interested in preserving the status quo; I want to overthrow it.

The wish to acquire more is admittedly a very natural and common thing; and when men succeed in this they are always praised rather than condemned.

The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love.

This first kind is excellent, the second good, and the third kind useless.

Men rise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves against attack, and then they attack others.

When you disarm the people, you commence to offend them and show that you distrust them either through cowardice or lack of confidence, and both of these opinions generate hatred.

War is just when it is necessary; arms are permissible when there is no hope except in arms.

The one who adapts his policy to the times prospers, and likewise that the one whose policy clashes with the demands of the times does not.

The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous.

A return to first principles in a republic is sometimes caused by the simple virtues of one man.

Nature that framed us of four elements, warring within our breasts for regiment, doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.

Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions.

But when they lack the ability to do so and yet want to acquire more at all costs, they deserve condemnation for their mistakes.

There are two distinct styles requisite: I intend, in the course of my career, if I have time, to give a specimen of both.

My life has been a fortunate one; I was born under a lucky star. It seems as if both wind and tide had favoured me.

In every battle there comes a time when both sides consider themselves beaten, then he who continues the attack wins.

Innocence in genius, and candor in power, are both noble qualities.

My time in Paris was an education in both the grimness of a relentless, grinding day job and the joys of nights in glittering restaurants.

Though nature be ever so generous, yet can she not make a hero alone. Fortune must contribute her part too; and till both concur, the work cannot be perfected.

I personally pledge myself to openly counsel, aid, and abet youth, both black and white, to quarantine any Jim Crow conscription system.

To that end, I believe that we should make room for both spiritual atheists and thinking believers.