“Principles have a way of yielding to power.”

prophecies do not alter fate, only confirm it.

What harm is there in dreaming, if it eases pain? What good is reality, if it blots out hope? Can a man’s mind be washed without bleaching his soul?

to ask for anything of consequence from friends who cannot refuse is uncivilized.

The young see what they wish to see. The old see what they do not wish.

you must not use wood to put out the fire.

Like most Chinese, I am basically a fatalist – too sophisticated for religion and too superstitious to deny the gods.

If mortals wait until the gods remake the world to their liking to be happy, they are already in hell.

For me, dressing is always a question of principle, respect, a sense of order, not to disguise myself, even in rotten places.

Mathematicians are like lovers. Grant a mathematician the least principle, and he will draw from it a consequence which you must also grant him, and from this consequence another.

Wall Street has a few prudent principles; the trouble is that they are always forgotten when they are most needed.

[The Jews] tried to kill the principles of all religions with the same mentality in which they betrayed Jesus Christ and the same way they tried to betray and kill the Prophet Muhammad.

I don’t believe in war, I believe in the principle of deterrence.

The fellow has absolutely no principles.”Money and gall” is all he has.

Forgiveness is a stunning principle, your ticket out of hate and fear and chaos.

The sculptor must search with passionate intensity for the underlying principle of the organisation of mass and tension – the meaning of gesture and the structure of rhythm.