Imagine a congress of eminent celebrities such as More Bacon Grotius Pascal Cromwell Bossuet Montesquieu Jefferson Napoleon Pitt etc. They would be an Encyclopedia of Errors.
Good and evil lie close together. Seek no artistic unity in character.
Truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history.
There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.
I’m not a driven businessman, but a driven artist. I never think about money. Beautiful things make money.
If some great catastrophe is not announced every morning, we feel a certain void. Nothing in the paper today, we sigh.
History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.
And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that.
Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right to do what we ought.
The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern: every class is unfit to govern.
To be able to look back upon one’s past life with satisfaction is to live twice.
There is not a soul who does not have to beg alms of another, either a smile, a handshake, or a fond eye.