Religion is among the most powerful causes of enthusiasm.

You can never plan the future by the past.

The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.

"War," says Machiavelli, "ought to be the only study of a prince;" and by a prince he means every sort of state, however constituted. "He ought," says this great political doctor, "to consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes ability to execute military plans." A meditation on the conduct of political societies made old Hobbes imagine that war was the state of nature.

Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver; and adulation is not of more service to the people than to kings.

Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.

Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of all their power; but they will never look to anything but power for their relief.