“Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.”

Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy.

Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.

Evil prevails when good men fail to act.

Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.

Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones.

Nothing in progression can rest on its original plan. We may as well think of rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant.

A State without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.

To speak of atrocious crime in mild language is treason to virtue.

It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.

The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.

Men love to hear of their power, but have an extreme disrelish to be told their duty.

Applaud us when we run, Console us when we fall, Cheer us when we recover.

Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.

The hottest fires in hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in times of moral crisis.

To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

I assumed that everything must yield to me, that the entire universe had to flatter my whims, and that I had the right to satisfy them at will.

Mathematicians may flatter themselves that they possess new ideas which mere human language is as yet unable to express.

Cesare persuaded King Louis to lend him an entire army to defeat me. I’m flattered.

The approval of a cat cannot but flatter the recipient.

If men of eminence are exposed to censure on one hand, they are as much liable to flattery on the other. If they receive reproaches which are not due to them, they likewise receive praises which they do not deserve.

Flattery won’t hurt you if you don’t swallow it.

Power is so pleasant that men quickly learn to be greedy in the enjoyment of it, and to flatter themselves that patriotism requires them to be imperious.

Mathematicians may flatter themselves that they possess new ideas which mere human language is as yet unable to express. Let them make the effort to express these ideas in appropriate words without the aid of symbols, and if they succeed they will not only lay us laymen under a lasting obligation.