For we both alike know that into the discussion of human affairs the question of justice enters only where the pressure of necessity is equal, and that the powerful exact what they can, and the weak grant what they must.

Happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous.

With reference to the narrative of events, far from permitting myself to derive it from the first source that came to hand, I did not even trust my own impressions, but it rests partly on what I saw myself, partly on what others saw for me, the accuracy of the report always being tried by the most severe and detailed tests possible. My conclusions have cost me some labour from the want of coincidence between accounts of the same occurrences by different eye-witnesses, arising sometimes from imperfect memory, sometimes from undue partiality for one side or the other.

When a man finds a conclusion agreeable, he accepts it without argument, but when he finds it disagreeable, he will bring against it all the forces of logic and reason.

For so remarkably perverse is the nature of man that he despises whoever courts him, and admires whoever will not bend before him.

You should punish in the same manner those who commit crimes with those who accuse falsely.

For they had learned that true safety was to be found in long previous training, and not in eloquent exhortations uttered when they were going into action.