In private enterprises men may advance or recede, whereas they who aim at empire have no alternative between the highest success and utter downfall.

War will of itself discover and lay open the hidden and rankling wounds of the victorious party.

Lust of power is the most flagrant of all the passions.

They have plundered the world, stripping naked the land in their hunger… they are driven by greed, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor… They ravage, they slaughter, they seize by false pretenses, and all of this they hail as the construction of empire. And when in their wake nothing remains but a desert, they call that peace.

The repose of nations cannot be secure without arms, armies cannot be maintained without pay, nor can the pay be produced without taxes

When the State is corrupt, then the laws are most multiplied.

It is found by experience that admirable laws and right precedents among the good have their origin in the misdeeds of others.