Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.

The possession of unlimited power corrodes the conscience, hardens the heart, and confounds the understanding.

A wise person does at once, what a fool does at last. Both do the same thing; only at different times.

Many things are better for silence than for speech: others are better for speech than for stationery.

No public character has ever stood the revelation of private utterance and correspondence.

Many men can no more be kept straight by spiritual motives than we can live without policemen.

History, to be above evasion or dispute, must stand on documents, not on opinions.