For out of such an ungoverned populace one is usually chosen as a leader, someone bold and unscrupulous who curries favor with the people by giving them other men's property. To such a man the protection of public office is given, and continually renewed. He emerges as a tyrant over the very people who raised him to power.

To live long it is necessary to live slowly.

I criticize by creation - not by finding fault.

It is the act of a bad man to deceive by falsehood.

Promises are not to be kept, if the keeping of them is to prove harmful to those to whom you have made them.

Justice consists in doing no injury to men; decency in giving them no offense.

All men have a feeling, that they would rather you told them a civil lie than give them a point blank refusal.... If you make a promise, the thing is still uncertain, depends on a future day, and concerns but few people; but if you refuse you alienate people to a certainty and at once, and many people too.