“One change always leaves the way open for the establishment of others.”

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.

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.

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.

Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions.

But when they lack the ability to do so and yet want to acquire more at all costs, they deserve condemnation for their mistakes.

It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.

Never was anything great achieved without danger.

Man the individual consoles himself for his passing with the thought of the offspring or the works which he leaves behind.

A dog, for me, it’s not just getting a dog. I couldn’t leave him at home.

We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.

I build my walls from the mess they leave.

When I left Dortmund, I said it’s not important what people think when you come in but what they think when you leave.

To me, nothing else about a tree is so remarkable as the extreme delicacy of the mechanism by which it grows and lives.

We are facing a formidable enemy in this field. It is the hunters… and to convince them to leave their guns on the wall is going to be very difficult.

I find that something one gets from Emerson in early life does not leave him when he grows old.