“Politics is not an exact science.”

History is simply a piece of paper covered with print: the main thing is to make history, not to write it.

Nothing should be left to an invaded people except their eyes for weeping.

A generation that has taken a beating is always followed by a generation that deals one.

Politics are not a science based on logic; they are the capacity of always choosing at each instant, in constantly changing situations, the least harmful, the most useful.

The secret of politics? Make a good treaty with Russia.

The main thing is to make history, not to write it.

We Germans fear God, but nothing else in the world.

With a gentleman I am always a gentleman and a half, and with a fraud I try to be a fraud and a half.

Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.

Preventive war is like committing suicide out of fear of death.

I have seen three emperors in their nakedness, and the sight was not inspiring.

When you say you agree to a thing in principle you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice.

Politics ruins the character.

A really great man is known by three signs: generosity in the design, humanity in the execution, moderation in success.

Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.

The nation that has the schools has the future.

We didn’t have cable TV. We just couldn’t afford it. But you don’t need cable to watch the Masters. In 1997, at the exact moment I started out, I watched Tiger Woods win the Masters.

The really great novel tends to be the exact negative of its author’s life.

Justice is never given; it is exacted.

Though men are apt to flatter and exalt themselves with their great achievements, yet these are, in truth, very often owing not so much to design as chance.

There’s nothing better than having an experience now that’s the exact same thing.

Justice is never given; it is exacted and the struggle must be continuous for freedom is never a final fact, but a continuing evolving process to higher and higher levels of human, social, economic, political and religious relationship.

Just didn’t know whether I would finish the book much less for it to come close to what I intended. I think that for any novel you never know exactly how the book is going to turn out…

Sometimes they are the same exact thing.