Nothing is easier than self-deceit.

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.

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.

It is impossible for men engaged in low and groveling pursuits to have noble and generous sentiments. A man's thought must always follow his employment.

I have seen travel plans happen only when they were made overnight.

From looking at your neighbor and realizing his true significance, and that he will die, pity and compassion will arise in you for him and finally you will love him.

Exercise power by means of kindness, and you may be causing more damage than you could by cruelty. Neither approach is correct.

It had made her too helpless, because that's what love did. There was no way around it and no way to fight it. Now if she lost, she lost everything.

I always thought that there was a really good chance that I wasn't going to get married.

In America there must be only citizens, not divided by grade, first and second, but citizens, east, west, north, and south.

Courtesies cannot be borrowed like snow shovels; you must have some of your own.

What is very little understood about the electronic age is that it angelizes man, disembodies him. Turns him into software.

Trying to run away is never the answer to being a fully human. Running away from the immediacy of our experience is like preferring death to life.

But it doesn't take a thousand men to open a door, my lord." "It might to keep it open.