It is in times of difficulty that great nations like great men display the whole energy of their character and become an object of admiration to posterity.

Lead the ideas of your time and they will accompany and support you; fall behind them and they drag you along with them; oppose them and they will overwhelm you.

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

I know he's a good general, but is he lucky?

The only conquests that are permanent and leave no regrets are our conquests over ourselves.

What is history but a fable agreed upon?

Morality has nothing to do with such a man as I am.