Everyone cleaves to the doctrine he has happened upon, as to a rock against which he has been thrown by tempest.

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.

I would rather die than hate.

I am following Nature without being able to grasp her, I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.

Get action. Seize the moment. Man was never intended to become an oyster.

A god implants in mortal guilt whenever he wants utterly to confound a house.

A low-carbon, clean energy economy can be an engine of growth for decades to come.

The best thing a society can do is ensure its children are taken care of.

The only way to accomplish big results is to think big and set big goals.

In a minimal interior, what you don't do is as important as what you do.

One race there is of men, one of gods, but from one mother we both draw our breath.

A very sea of thought; neither calm nor clear, if you will, yet wherein the toughest pearl-diver may dive to his utmost depth, and return not only with sea-wreck but with true orients.