House speaker Thomas read could see the trend, but he could not have changed himself.

Chief among the forces affecting political folly is lust for power, named by Tacitus as "the most flagrant of all passions.

Government was rarely more than a choice between the disastrous and the unpalatable.

The process of gaining power employs means which degrade or brutalize the seeker, who awakes to find that power has been possessed at the cost of virtue or moral purpose lost.

Confronted by menace or what is perceived as menace, governments will usually attempt to smash it, rarely to examine it, understand it, and drefine it.

The utility of perseverance in absurdity is more than I could ever discern. Edmund Burke

He was always acting, always enveloping himself in artificiality, perhaps to conceal the volcano within.

How much does a man's effort depend upon the age in which his work is cast? Pope Clement VII

No single characteristic ever overtakes an entire society.

Prison does not silence ideas whose time has come.

Strong prejudices in an ill-formed mind are hazardous to government.

God begets love.

I love books where I can't wait to turn every page, songs that grab me the first time I hear them, and films that make me totally forget about the craft because I am totally engaged in the story.

The firmest friendships have been formed in mutual adversity as iron is most strongly united by the fiercest flame.

Out of every fruition of success no matter what comes forth something to make a new effort necessary.

I know that this operation will be sort of helter-skelter. But the First Marine Division is going to win the war by landing at Inchon.

Books bear him up a while, and make him try to swim with bladders of philosophy.

I am a believer in women, in their ability to do things and in their influence and power. Women set the standards for the world, and it is for us, women in Canada, to set the standards high.

Nobody brings numbers to life like Horace Dediu does.

The difference between them and us is that we want to check government spending and they want to spend government checks.

What you are thinking, what shape your mind is in, is what makes the biggest difference of all.