"Our good qualities expose us more to..." - Quote by Francois De La Rochefoucauld

“It is sometimes necessary to play the fool to avoid being deceived by cunning men.”

“The vices enter into the composition of the virtues, as poisons into that of medicines. Prudence collects and arranges them, and uses them beneficially against the ills of life.”

“The heart of man ever finds a constant succession of passions, so that the destroying and pulling down of one proves generally tobe nothing else but the production and the setting up of another.”

“It has seemed to me that most people are generally good, in every race and in every country where I have been.”

“He (the sage) is good to those who are good. He is also good to those who are not good. That is the virtue of good.”

“All men in the abstract are just and good.”

“Our efforts to counter hatred, intolerance, and indifference must continue simultaneously at individual and structural levels. We must try to influence for good the minds and hearts of individual people through dialogue and confidence building. These efforts must be reinforced by our efforts to create just structures in society to support the ongoing work of negotiations in the human community. Only then will we have a chance to negate the terrible consequences of the tremendous conflicts facing humankind today.”

“The prince must consider, as has been in part said before, how to avoid those things which will make him hated or contemptible; and as often as he shall have succeeded he will have fulfilled his part, and he need not fear any danger in other reproaches.”

“In Moulmein, in lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people - the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me.”