I treat policies like war. I hoodwink one flank so as to trounce the other. In my family we kneel only to God.

There shall be no Alps.

Men have their virtues and their vices, their heroisms and their perversities; men are neither wholly good nor wholly bad, but possess and practice all that there is of good and bad here below. Such is the general rule. Temperament, education, the accidents of life, are modifying factors. Outside of this, everything is ordered arrangement, everything is chance. Such has been my rule of expectation and it has usually brought me success.

To write history one must be more than a man, since the author who holds the pen of this great justiciary must be free from all preoccupation of interest or vanity.

Neglect of duty does not cease, by repetition, to be neglect of duty.

My success and everything good that I have done, I owe to my mother.

Ambition never is in a greater hurry that I; it merely keeps pace with circumstances and with my general way of thinking.