The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opponents than from his fervent supporters. For his supporters will push him to disaster unless his opponents show him where the dangers are. So if he is wise he will often pray to be delivered from his friends, because they will ruin him. But though it hurts, he ought also to pray never to be left without opponents; for they keep him on the path of reason and good sense.

It is easier to develop great power than it is to know how to use it wisely.

A really good diplomat does not go in for victories, even when he wins them.

It is impossible to abolish either with a law or an axe the desires of men.

We know that it is possible to harness desire to many interests, that evil is one form of a desire, and not the nature of it.

Life is an irreversible process and for that reason its future can never be a repetition of the past.

The principle of majority rule is the mildest form in which the force of numbers can be exercised. It is a pacific substitute for civil war in which the opposing armies are counted and the victory is awarded to the larger before any blood is shed. Except in the sacred tests of democracy and in the incantations of the orators, we hardly take the trouble to pretend that the rule of the majority is not at bottom a rule of force.