“And in general, every ordinance made without the consent of those who are to obey it, is a violence rather than a law.”

In my experience, men who respond to good fortune with modesty and kindness are harder to find than those who face adversity with courage.

Anything forced is not beautiful.

Excess of grief for the dead is madness; for it is an injury to the living, and the dead know it not.

Let Your Tools Be Equal to the Task.

Whether in industry or in politics, leaders should be building a new, more flexible order for the imperiled generations to come.

We’re all going to die, but does that mean we have to be buried alive?

It is no disgrace but honorable rather to steal, except such things as the law forbids.

I am a stranger in all countries.

If you consider what are called the virtues in mankind, you will find their growth is assisted by education and cultivation.

Most people, when they are set upon looking into other people’s affairs, never turn to examine themselves.

No human being will ever know the truth, for even if they happened to say it by chance, they would not know they had done so.

People often say what is right and do what is wrong; but nobody can be in the wrong if he is doing what is right.

Success Should Never Breed Complacency.

Whatever you determine to be right, with diligence endeavour to perform.

Battles are decided more by the morale of the troops than by their bodily strength.

Brevity is the soul of command.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.

In the future, there will be fewer but better Russians.

The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.

Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.

There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle.

There’s really no point to voting. If it made any difference, it would probably be illegal.

Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich — that is the democracy of capitalist society.