Politics is not an exact science.

Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.

One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans (1888).

What we learn from History is that no one learns from History

The Americans are a very lucky people. They're bordered to the north and south by weak neighbors, and to the east and west by fish.

God has a special providence for fools, drunks, and the United States of America.

People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.

The secret of politics? Make a good treaty with Russia.

The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood.

We live in a wondrous time in which the strong is weak because of his moral scruples and the weak grows strong because of his audacity.

Never fight with Russian. On your every stratagem they answer unpredictable stupidity.

It seems to me that government is like a pump and what it pumps up is just what we are a fair sample of the intellect the ethics and the morals of the people no better no worse.

Real religion is no religion at all.

I do not pretend that birth control is the only way in which population can be kept from increasing. There are others, which, one must suppose, opponents of birth control would prefer.

There is nothing I fear so much as idleness, the want of occupation, inactivity, the lethargy of the faculties; when the body is idle, the spirit suffers painfully.

Obviously we're a consumer nation and you have the power to influence these big corporations who are running the world right now through what you chose to, or not to, purchase.

I write a sentence a thousand times, changing it all the time to look at it in different ways.

You really have to begin by figuring out what kind of person you are. The tip is to really take a look at yourself.

Majority rule rests on numbers; democracy rests on the well-grounded assumption that society is neither a collection of units nor an organism but a network of human relations.

The human condition ... is defined by the aspiration to always supersede oneself, which in turn requires nonconformity.

It [salvation] is not this flu shot mentality of an invitation of the Gospel.