“To keep your actions and your plans secret always has been a very good thing . .. Marcus Crassus said to one who asked him when he was going to move the army: 'Do you believe that you will be the only one not to hear the trumpet?”

“And when neither their property nor honour is touched, the majority of men live content, and he has only to contend with the ambition of a few, whom he can curb with ease in many ways.”

“The peasant wants only to be left alone to prosper in peace.”

“Men are of three different capacities: one understands intuitively; another understands so far as it is explained; and a third understands neither of himself nor by explanation. The first is excellent, the second, commendable, and the third, altogether useless.”

“A man who wishes to make a profession of goodness in everything must necessarily come to grief among so many who are not good. Therefore, it is necessary for a prince, who wishes to maintain himself, to learn how not to be good, and to use this knowledge and not use it according to the necessity of the case.”

“Is this government of Britain's Isle, and this the royalty of Albion's King?”

“What a benefit would the American government, not yet relieved of its extreme need, render to itself, and to every city, village and hamlet in the States, if it would tax whiskey and rum almost to the point of prohibition! Was it Bonaparte who said that he found vices very good patriots? "He got five millions from the love of brandy, and he should be glad to know which of the virtues would pay him as much." Tobacco and opium have broad backs, and will cheerfully carry the load of armies, if you choose to make them pay high for such joy as they give and such harm as they do.”

“The State is a poor, good beast who means the best: it means friendly.”

“If I shall be condemned Upon surmises, all proofs sleeping else But what your jealousies awake, I tell you 'Tis rigor and not law.”

“Though justice be thy plea consider this, that in the course of justice none of us should see salvation.”

“When law can do no right,Let it be lawful that law bar no wrong.”

“Go, bid the soldiers shoot.”

“Give them great meals of beef and iron and steel, they will eat like wolves and fight like devils.”

“We proceeded systematically, village by village and we destroyed the houses, filled up the wells, blew down the towers, cut down the shady trees, burned the crops and broke the reservoirs in punitive devastation.”

“Let still woman take An elder than herself: so wears she to him, So sways she level in her husband's heart, For, boy, however we do praise ourselves, Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm, More longing, wavering, sooner to be lost and warn, Than women's are.”

“The height of the pinnacle is determined by the breadth of the base.”

“Blest are those Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled, That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger To sound what stop she please.”

“The State is a poor, good beast who means the best: it means friendly.”

“In dealing with the State, we ought to remember that its institutions are not aboriginal, though they existed before we were born; that they are not superior to the citizen; that every one of them was once the act of a single man; every law and usage was a man's expedient to meet a particular case; that they all are imitable, all alterable; we may make as good; we may make better.”

“This little world, this little state, this little commonwealth of our own.”