Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind.

Politicians are not born; they are excreted.

Poor is the nation that has no heroes, but poorer still is the nation that having heroes, fails to remember and honor them.

It is the peculiar quality of a fool to perceive the faults of others and to forget his own.

Read at every wait; read at all hours; read within leisure; read in times of labor; read as one goes in; read as one goest out. The task of the educated mind is simply put: read to lead.

We learn nothing from history except that we learn nothing from history.

It is not enough to acquire wisdom, it is necessary to employ it.

Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.

Nothing is more unreliable than the populace, nothing more obscure than human intentions, nothing more deceptive than the whole electoral system.

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

It is hard to explain just how a single sight of a tangible object with measurable dimensions could so shake and change a man

Intelligence is knowing the right answer. Wisdom is knowing when to say it.

And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.

On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.

When something seems ‘the most obvious thing in the world’ it means that any attempt to understand the world has been given up.

Sure many people will be shocked when I win, but not me.

Sometimes when reading Goethe I have the paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny.

All complaining comes from pride.

I am ever fascinated by the human experience and by, actually, human beings.

Rid your body of its impurities, let your speech be true and sweet, feel friendship for the world, and with humility seek wealth and knowledge.