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

His good example has such an influence that the good men strive to imitate him, and the wicked are ashamed to lead a life so contrary to his example.

Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain.

Benefits should be conferred gradually; and in that way they will taste better.

There are three kinds of intelligence: one kind understands things for itself, the other appreciates what others can understand, the third understands neither for itself nor through others.

Politics have no relation to morals.

War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans.

Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries – for heavy ones they cannot.

He who wishes to be obeyed must know how to command.

Since it is difficult to join them together, it is safer to be feared than to be loved when one of the two must be lacking.

No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution.

Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.

Severities should be dealt out all at once, so that their suddenness may give less offense.

The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.

Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great.

A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise.

Tardiness often robs us opportunity, and the dispatch of our forces.

I knew in the first grade that they were lying to me because I had already been exposed to other points of view.

Ed Sullivan brought me to TV first in 1952, then Garry Moore’s program gave me a lot of confidence and freedom.

I have too many friends who tell me that they spend the first hour of every morning going through their e-mail messages. I’d like to use my time more carefully.

When the first mechanical clocks were invented, marking off time in crisp, regular intervals, it must have surprised people to discover that time flowed outside their own mental and physiological processes.

When I read Dickens for the first time, I thought he was Jewish, because he wrote about oppression and bigotry, all the things that my father talked about.

The first is as rigid and metallic as a massive pendulum of iron that swings back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

First you learn to drive fast. Next, you learn to drive fast in traffic. Then, you learn how to do it for 500 miles.

An important technology first creates a problem and then solves it.