"However greatly we distrust the sincerity of..." - Quote by Francois De La Rochefoucauld

“We should often feel ashamed of our best actions if the world could see all the motives which produced them.”

“Some crimes get honor and renown by being committed with more pomp, by a greater number, and in a higher degree of wickedness thanothers. Hence it is that public robberies, plunderings, and sackings have been looked upon as excellencies and noble achievements, and the seizing of whole countries, however unjustly and barbarously, is dignified with the glorious name of gaining conquests.”

“How deceitful hope may be, yet she carries us on pleasantly to the end of life.”

“Openness by the leader paves the way for ownership by the people. Without ownership, changes will be short term. Changing people's habits and ways of thinking is like writing instructions in the snow during a snowstorm. Every twenty minutes the instructions must be rewritten, unless ownership is given along with instructions.”

“Democracy will break under the strain of apron strings. It can exist only on trust.”

“One of the ways we communicate that we can be trusted is in the way we care for other people.”

“We often feel that we lack something, and seem to see that very quality in someone else, promptly attributing all our own qualities to him too, and a kind of ideal contentment as well. And so the happy mortal is a model of complete perfection--which we have ourselves created.”

“Hope bases vast premises on foolish accidents, and reads a word where in fact only a scribble exists.”

“Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.”