It is more difficult to organize a peace than to win a war; but the fruits of victory will be lost if the peace is not organized.

That in the soul which is called the mind is, before it thinks, not actually any real thing.

Any change of government which has to be introduced should be one which men, starting from their existing constitutions, will be both willing and able to adopt, since there is quite as much trouble in the reformation of an old constitution as in the establishment of a new one, just as to unlearn is as hard as to learn.

.. for desire is like a wild beast, and anger perverts rulers and the very best of men. Hence law is intelligence without appetition.

Tragedy is an imitation not of men but of a life, an action

You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.

The society that loses its grip on the past is in danger, for it produces men who know nothing but the present, and who are not aware that life had been, and could be, different from what it is.