It is a great matter to be in authority over others; for authority, if it be rightly used, will make you feared beyond your actual resources.

Ambition is not in itself an evil; nor is he to be condemned whose spirit prompts him to seek fame by worthy and honourable ways.

Let no one trust so entirely to natural prudence as to persuade himself that it will suffice to guide him without help from experience.

Keep your eye fixed not so much on what they [people] ought in reason to do, as on what they are likely to do based on their disposition and habits.

To relinquish a present good through apprehension of a future evil is in most instances unwise ... from a fear which may afterwards turn out groundless, you lost the good that lay within your grasp.

Waste no time with revolutions that do not remove the causes of your complaints but simply change the faces of those in charge.

Experience has always shown, and reason also, that affairs which depend on many seldom succeed.