Serious things cannot be understood without laughable things, nor opposites at all without opposites.

A grateful mind is a great mind which eventually attracts to itself great things.

Those who reproach injustice do so because they are afraid not of doing it but of suffering it.

The rulers of the state are the only persons who ought to have the privilege of lying, either at home or abroad; they may be allowed to lie for the good of the state.

When two friends are in the mood to chat, we have to go about it in a gentler and more dialectical way. By 'more dialectical,' I mean not only that we give real responses, but that we base our responses solely on what the interlocutor admits that he himself knows.

Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment.

Don't force your children into your ways, for they were created for a time different from your own.