“Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority…”

Monarchy hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of numbers.

The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority.

Democracy generally monopolizes and concentrates power.

Socialism means slavery.

The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.

Every class is unfit to govern.

If some great catastrophe is not announced every morning, we feel a certain void. Nothing in the paper today, we sigh.

If there is any presumption, it is the other way against holders of power…power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

No public character has ever stood the revelation of private utterance and correspondence.

It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority.

Liberty is the prevention of control by others. This requires self-control and, therefore, religious and spiritual influences; education, knowledge, well-being.

Truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history.

Piety sometimes gives birth to scruples, and faith to superstition, when they are not directed by wisdom and knowledge.

At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities, that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries whose objects often differed from their own; and this association, which is always dangerous, has sometimes been disastrous.

The true natural check on absolute democracy is the federal system, which limits the central government by the powers reserved, and the state governments by the powers they have ceded.

Every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity.

John Lewis we all know was beaten terribly, almost to an inch of his life, opened doors that will never be closed, although there are forces that are attempting to close those doors.

I own almost 100 hotels in North America. Some of them are only in management, but some of them we have some small stakes in them.

For paranoia about ‘what other people think’ : remember that only some hate, a very few love – and almost all just don’t care.

I could work and get to know him and have him help me with the text, the script and become him. It’s almost like a painter having a model to become.

Almost every cartoonist, when he’s sitting down to draw a funny face.

You could almost call them marriages, even though I didn’t marry. But it was costly.

I grew up in the 1950s and ’60s, when it was almost a holiday when a black act would go on Ed Sullivan.

My early career was a real rush of movies and stardom – it was almost overwhelming.