Nothing is necessary except God, and nothing is less necessary than pain.

I don't know what a scoundrel is like, but I know what a respectable man is like, and it's enough to make one's flesh creep.

Every country has the government it deserves.

To know how to wait. It is the great secret of success.

In a democracy people get the leaders they deserve.

It is one of man's curious idiosyncrasies to create difficulties for the pleasure of resolving them.

Man in general, if reduced to himself, is too wicked to be free.

False opinions are like false money, struck first of all by guilty men and thereafter circulated by honest people who perpetuate the crime without knowing what they are doing.

What is needed is not a revolution in the opposite direction, but the opposite of a revolution.

It is not the mediocrity of women's education which makes their weakness; it is their weakness which necessarily causes their mediocrity.

We are tainted by modern philosophy which has taught us that all is good, whereas evil has polluted everything and in a very real sense all is evil, since nothing is in its proper place.

In putting off what one has to do one runs the risk of never being able to do it.

We are now heading down a centuries-long path toward increasing the productivity of our natural capital - the resource systems upon which we depend to live - instead of our human capital.

Civilization is only savagery silver-gilt.

Life, in all its uniqueness, would not be life without the negatives and the positives.

Were it not for the shepherds, there would have been no reception. And were it not for a group of stargazers, there would have been no gifts.

As I've said before, time is short, and life is precious.

Laboratories are useful, but reflection for us must always start from experience.

I love watching the Serengeti, the way lions live. The only way the king lion loses his crown is by somebody physically defeating him.

The fear of being different prevents most people from seeking new ways to solve their problems.