Power is of its nature evil, whoever wields it.

The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity.

The whole life of Demosthenes... leaves the impression of a melancholy state of things, and of the brazen insolence of wickedness. A particularly striking idea of how things really were in Greece can be obtained from one feature of life - the sons who turned out badly.... the sons of gifted but arrogant fathers turned out merely arrogant, the grandsons hopeless; it is respect alone that sustains families and gives them traditions.

History is still in large measure poetry to me.

Great men are necessary for our life, in order that the movement of world history can free itself sporadically, by fits and starts, from obsolete ways of living and inconsequential talk.

The seventeenth century is everywhere a time in which the state's power over everything individual increases, whether that power be in absolutist hands or may be considered the result of a contract, etc. People begin to dispute the sacred right of the individual ruler or authority without being aware that at the same time they are playing into the hands of a colossal state power.

The more recently power has originated, the less it can remain stationary - first because those who created it have become accustomed to rapid further movement and because they are and will be innovators per se; secondly, because the forces aroused or subdued by them can be employed only through further acts.