“You would make a ship sail against the winds and currents by lighting a bonfire under her decks? I have no time for such nonsense.”

In politics, stupidity is not a handicap.

We frustrate many designs against us by pretending not to see them.

The reason most people fail instead of succeed is they trade what they want most for what they want at the moment.

Napoleon Bonaparte, on finding a dog beside the body of his dead master, licking his face and howling, on a moonlit field after a battle. Napoleon was haunted by this scene until his own death.

Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets

Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action comes, stop thinking and go in.

Courage cannot be counterfeited. It is one virtue that escapes hypocrisy.

All great events hang by a single thread. The clever man takes advantage of everything, neglects nothing that may give him some added opportunity; the less clever man, by neglecting one thing, sometimes misses everything.

If you want a thing done well, do it yourself.

The only victories which leave no regret are those which are gained over ignorance.

Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.

A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon.

To write history one must be more than a man, since the author who holds the pen of this great justiciary must be free from all preoccupation of interest or vanity.

Success is the most convincing talker in the world.

A throne is only a bench covered with velvet.

Nothing is lost as long as courage remains

A clone of Einstein wouldn’t be stupid, but he wouldn’t necessarily be any genius, either.

Our nation is turning into an idiocracy.

It is commonly believed that anyone who tabulates numbers is a statistician. This is like believing that anyone who owns a scalpel is a surgeon.

The melancholy thing about the world is that it is full of stupid people; and the world is run for the benefit of the stupid and common.

In England people are very proud of being very stupid.

One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.

I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am.

I think there’s almost nothing I can’t excuse except perhaps worshiping graven images. That seems to be idiotic.