“When a government lasts a long while, it deteriorates by insensible degrees. Republics end through luxury, monarchies through poverty.”

As men are affected in all ages by the same passions, the occasions which bring about great changes are different, but the causes are always the same.

Each citizen contributes to the revenues of the State a portion of his property in order that his tenure of the rest may be secure.

A nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them in a century.

Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.

Love of reading enables a man to exchange the weary hours, which come to every one, for hours of delight.

Study has been for me the sovereign remedy against all the disappointments of life. I have never known any trouble that an hour’s reading would not dissipate.

Countries are not cultivated in proportion to their fertility, but to their liberty.

The success of most things depends upon knowing how long it will take to succeed.

When virtue is banished, ambition invades the minds of those who are disposed to receive it and avarice possesses the whole community.

At our coming into the world we contract an immense debt to our country, which we can never discharge.

Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.

It is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.

If I knew of something that could serve my nation but would ruin another, I would not propose it to my prince, for I am first a man and only then a Frenchman… because I am necessarily a man, and only accidentally am I French.

Talent is a gift which God has given us secretly, and which we reveal without perceiving it.

Trade is the best cure for prejudice.

It is difficult for the united states to be all of equal power and extent.

I’m almost forty years old and I’ve been doing this for a long time, so I felt like, “Okay, I’m ready to do this.”

You get an image after you act in a film, but it is not necessary that you last long because of that image.

I am absolutely a Giants fan and I’m a Dynasty baby so I was a 49ers fan for a long time.

Meditation is like a single log of wood. Insight and investigation are one end of the log; calm and concentration are the other end. If you lift up the whole log, both sides come up at once. Which is concentration and which is insight? Just this mind.

Often my creative life has seemed like a long tunnel, dark and damp. And sometimes I wondered whether I could live through it. But I did!

I watched the land for as long as I could, until it disappeared behind its shawl of mist.

I am used to being beautiful. I have been beautiful for so long that it is an essential part of me.

As a person, I was born to give out my opinions. By giving out my opinions, I realize who I am.