“The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love.”

Tardiness often robs us opportunity, and the dispatch of our forces.

The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.

Whoever conquers a free town and does not demolish it commits a great error and may expect to be ruined himself.

To understand the nature of the people one must be a prince, and to understand the nature of the prince, one must be of the people.

The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.

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.

I’m not interested in preserving the status quo; I want to overthrow it.

The wish to acquire more is admittedly a very natural and common thing; and when men succeed in this they are always praised rather than condemned.

This first kind is excellent, the second good, and the third kind useless.

Men rise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves against attack, and then they attack others.

When you disarm the people, you commence to offend them and show that you distrust them either through cowardice or lack of confidence, and both of these opinions generate hatred.

War is just when it is necessary; arms are permissible when there is no hope except in arms.

The one who adapts his policy to the times prospers, and likewise that the one whose policy clashes with the demands of the times does not.

The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous.

A return to first principles in a republic is sometimes caused by the simple virtues of one man.

Nature that framed us of four elements, warring within our breasts for regiment, doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.

The good photographer will produce a competent picture every time whatever his subject. But only when his subject makes and immediate and direct appeal to his own interests will he produce a work of distinction.

Sometimes I have to pause to make the distinction between Ben the teenager and Ben the businessman.

Who is to say what is real and what is not?’Real’ is a distinction of a naïve mind.

For our immigration policy to make sense, it is necessary to make distinctions between those who obey the law, and those who violate it.

Heidegger makes the distinction between being absorbed in the way things are in the world and being aware that things are in the world.

I think the British have the distinction above all other nations of being able to put new wine into old bottles without bursting them.

These infinitesimal distinctions between man and man are too paltry for an Omnipotent Being. How these madmen give themselves away! The real God taketh heed lest a sparrow fall. But the God created from human vanity sees no difference between an eagle and a sparrow.

Simplicity and naturalness are the truest marks of distinction.