A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.

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

They who say that we should love our fellow-citizens but not foreigners, destroy the universal brotherhood of mankind, with which benevolence and justice would perish forever.

Death is dreadful to the man whose all is extinguished with his life; but not to him whose glory never can die.

Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum. (Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.)

For he, indeed, who looks into the face of a friend beholds, as it were, a copy of himself.

Most happy is he who is entirely self-reliant, and who centers all his requirements in himself alone.