The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democracy, from beneath which the old aristocratic colors sometimes peep.

I do not know if the people of the United States would vote for superior men if they ran for office, but there can be no doubt that such men do not run.

Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all.

everybody feels the evil, but no one has courage or energy enough to seek the cure

On close inspection, we shall find that religion, and not fear, has ever been the cause of the long-lived prosperity of an absolute government.

The happy and powerful do not go into exile, and there are no surer guarantees of equality among men than poverty and misfortune.

I am unaware of his plans but I shall never stop believing in them because I cannot fathom them and I prefer to mistrust my own intellectual capacities than his justice.

Nations, as well as men, almost always betray the most prominent features of their future destiny in their earliest years.

A whole nation cannot rise above itself.

When justice is more certain and more mild, is at the same time more efficacious.

The whole people contracts the habits and tastes of the magistrate.

Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God

I romanticize life the way artists see scenery or a dreamer gazes up at the stars.

We have to be successful at the cutting-edge industries of the future like Twitter. But we also have always been a country that makes stuff.

Envy is the basis of democracy.

On the eve of World War I, an estimated two million Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire. Well over a million were deported and hundreds of thousands were simply killed.

Something given, something taken away. Does it always have to work like that?

But the path you end up on means that you have to close a lot of doors, too.

I'm bringing what I've always wanted: film quality work on television. That's the way it should be.

There were poets before Homer.

I'm always doing things I can't do. That's how I get to do them.