Close alliances with despots are never safe for free states.

Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.

It is not possible to found a lasting power upon injustice, perjury, and treachery.

All speech is vain and empty unless it be accompanied by action.

A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true.

Nothing is easier than self-deceit.

Success has a great tendency to conceal and throw a veil over the evil deeds of men.

Nothing is so easy as to deceive one's self; for what we wish, that we readily believe; but such expectations are often inconsistent with the real state of things.

Do you remember that in classical times when Cicero had finished speaking, the people said, "How well he spoke" but when Demosthenes had finished speaking, they said, "Let us march.

The best protection for the people is not necessarily to believe everything people tell them.

We need money, for sure, Athenians, and without money nothing can be done that ought to be done.

...the magic of love runs at cross purposes with the rhythm of living...

Strategy and timing are the Himalayas of marketing. Everything else is the Catskills.

I think I tried to control situations within my first marriage and I wasn't the easiest person to live with.

If being a gangster were a prerequisite to being a musician, there'd be a lot less cello music, for example.

It sometimes makes people feel better about themselves, you know, to put other people down, or make fun of them, or maybe make mockery of their work and that doesn't make me feel good at all.

I always take photographs when I attend a funeral. Most people there know who I am and expect me to be there with my camera.

The digital age is for me in many ways about temporal wounding. It's really messed up our ontological clocks.

You do a James Bond film, you're being part of an anachronism, a tradition.

It is a weak man who blames his failures on the strength of others.

To be honest, because there's loud music in my ears probably three hours a day, between sound check and the show, I listen to podcasts more than I listen to music on the road.