Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Politics is organized hatred, that is unity.

I want to find someone on the earth so intelligent that he welcomes opinions which he condemns.

As for boredom ... I notice that it leaves me as soon as I am doing something that has got to be done.

There are lots of people who cannot think seriously without injuring their minds.

If any of you ... have a mind to make himself heard a mile off, you must make a bonfire of your reputations, and a close enemy of most men who would wish you well.

One of the deepest impulses in man is the impulse to record, - to scratch a drawing on a tusk or keep a diary, to collect sagas and heap cairns. This instinct as to the enduring value of the past is, one might say, the very basis of civilization.