Strike, if you will, but listen.

He who commands the sea has command of everything.

I choose the likely man in preference to the rich man; I want a man without money rather than money without a man.

I cannot fiddle, but I can make a great state from a little city.

The Athenians govern the Greeks; I govern the Athenians; you, my wife, govern me; your son governs you.

I never learned how to tune a harp, or play upon a lute; but I know how to raise a small and obscure city to glory and greatness...whereto all kindreds of the earth will pilgrim.

I have with me two gods, Persuasion and Compulsion.

May I never sit on a tribunal where my friends shall not find more favor from me than strangers.

I choose the likely man in preference to the rich man I want a man without money rather than money without a man.

The pursuit and preservation of purity can drive prejudice and hate. Many crimes against humanity have been committed in its name. Purity is best applied to water.

It was not intended as a compliment. It was a confession. Now that I have made it, something seems to have gone out of me. Perhaps one should never put one's worship into words.

The act of acting morally is behaving as if everything we do matters.

High school music teachers... nobody makes a living off it.

Nothing pleases a woman quite so well as to look so sweet that a man wants to kiss her, and then abuse him for his impudence.

When you battle with your conscience and lose, you win.

I never believed in trying to do anything. Whatever I set out to do I found I had already accomplished.

A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean question: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well - or ill?

You can't be what you don't see. I didn't think about being a doctor. I didn't even think about being a clerk in a store, I'd never seen a black clerk in a clothing store.

Politics is rather the creation of the best possible polity out of the deep inner needs of its citizenry - who are only some of its members.