“There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots – suspicion.”

Close alliances with despots are never safe for free states.

The readiest and surest way to get rid of censure, is to correct ourselves.

The more able a man is, if he make ill use of his abilities, the more dangerous will he be to the commonwealth.

To remind a man of the good turns you have done him is very much like a reproach.

The best protection for the people is not necessarily to believe everything people tell them.

What a man wishes, he will believe.

Whatever shall be to the advantage of all, may that prevail!

There is a great deal of wishful thinking in such cases it is the easiest thing of all to deceive ones self.

Every advantage in the past is judged in the light of the final issue.

Small opportunities often presage great enterprises.

One believes in what one wants to believe in.

Success has a great tendency to conceal and throw a veil over the evil deeds of men.

He who confers a favor should at once forget it, if he is not to show a sordid ungenerous spirit. To remind a man of a kindness conferred and to talk of it, is little different from reproach.

Good fortune is the greatest of blessings, but good counsel comes next, and the lack of it destroys the other also.

Everything great is not always good, but all good things, are great.

It is the natural disposition of all men to listen with pleasure to abuse and slander of their neighbour, and to hear with impatience those who utter praises of themselves.

I wasn’t a point guard. I was a killer.

For among other evils caused by being disarmed, it renders you contemptible; which is one of those disgraceful things which a prince must guard against.

Keep it, guard it, care for it, for it keeps men, guards men, cares for men. Destroy it and man is destroyed.

If we judged everybody by the stupid, unguarded things they blurt out to their nearest and dearest, then we wouldn’t ever get anywhere.

I did join the Revolutionary Guard, but I was simply a simple Revolutionary Guard, never a commander.

When I was on my hunger strike, and I was in a hospital, the guards who inflicted all manner of injustice against me, and all manner of hardship…

The Revolutionary Guard was created to help defend the revolution, but it soon was diverted from its initial path.

The ocean doesn’t want me today, But I’ll come back tomorrow to play. The riptide is waging And the life guard’s away But the ocean doesn’t want me today.