“Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.”

Never create by law what can be accomplished by morality.

Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free.

I should like to abolish funerals; the time to mourn a person is at his birth, not his death.

Coffee renders many foolish people temporarily capable of wise actions

The public business must be carried on with a certain motion, neither too quick nor too slow.

To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them.

There is no one, says another, whom fortune does not visit once in his life; but when she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in at the door, and flies out at the window.

Honor is unknown in despotic states.

Honor sets all the parts of the body politic in motion, and by its very action connects them; thus each individual advances the public good, while he only thinks of promoting his own interest.

The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilisation of any country.

There are bad examples which are worse than crimes; and more states have perished from the violation of morality than from the violation of law.

What orators lack in depth they make up for in length.

Law should be like death, which spares no one.

Wherever I find envy I take a pleasure in provoking it: I always praise before an envious man those who make him grow pale.

There should be weeping at a man’s birth, not at his death.

When the body of the people is possessed of the supreme power, it is called a democracy.

Why should I trade one tyrant three thousand miles away for three thousand tyrants one mile away?

The tree of liberty grows only when watered by the blood of tyrants.

Any ideal system is its own worst enemy, and as soon as you start to implement these visions of grandeur, they just fall apart and turn into a complete tyranny.

Republics end through luxury; monarchies through poverty.

Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.

Some have said that it is not the business of private men to meddle with government–a bold and dishonest saying, which is fit to come from no mouth but that of a tyrant or a slave.

Men are cowards before women until they become tyrants.

A test of a people is how it behaves toward the old. It is easy to love children. Even tyrants and dictators make a point of being fond of children.