Wherever I find envy I take a pleasure in provoking it: I always praise before an envious man those who make him grow pale.

It is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.

The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.

We receive three educations, one from our parents, one from our school-masters, and one from the world. The third contradicts all that the first two teach us.

There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.

Every man who has power is impelled to abuse it.

In the state of nature... all men are born equal, but they cannot continue in this equality. Society makes them lose it, and they recover it only by the protection of the law.

A nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them in a century.

For a country, everything will be lost when the jobs of an economist and a banker become highly respected professions.

Liberty... is there only when there is no abuse of power.

Knowledge humanizes mankind, and reason inclines to mildness; but prejudices eradicate every tender disposition.

Amazing, really, to think of what a man could achieve with the simple ability to put pen to paper and spin a decent yarn.

Mutability of temper and inconsistency with ourselves is the greatest weakness of human nature.

It requires enormous energy for us to cut the African American uninsured rate by a third. A lot of scars.

We write to find out what we didn’t know we knew. We write to know deeper and truer. We write to connect the dots: a whole new constellation.

We don't want to merely obey God: we need to catch His heart. It is then we will glimpse the wisdom behind His directives, and not just see them as laws.

I would like to ask Him if He was indeed virgin born, because the answer to that question would define history.

Our life comes in segments, and we have to understand that we can have it all if we're not trying to do it all at once.

This thing about looking for someone less different... It only really worked, he realized, if you were convinced that being you wasn't so bad in the first place.

I feel I have so much more to deliver than music.