Things sacred should not only be touched with the hands, but unviolated in thought. [Lat., Res sacros non modo manibus attingi, sed ne cogitatione quidem violari fas fuit.]

Politicians are not born; they are excreted.

Poor is the nation that has no heroes, but poorer still is the nation that having heroes, fails to remember and honor them.

It is the peculiar quality of a fool to perceive the faults of others and to forget his own.

Read at every wait; read at all hours; read within leisure; read in times of labor; read as one goes in; read as one goest out. The task of the educated mind is simply put: read to lead.

We learn nothing from history except that we learn nothing from history.

It is not enough to acquire wisdom, it is necessary to employ it.

Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.

Nothing is more unreliable than the populace, nothing more obscure than human intentions, nothing more deceptive than the whole electoral system.

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

The senator...was a smart man who had made his way in life with a single-mindedness oblivious to any of those stumbling blocks known as conscience, sworn oaths, justice, duty...

Tears are curious things, for like earthquakes or puppet shows, they can occur at any time, without any warning and without any good reason.

I grew up believing that the willingness and ability to work is the basic ingredient of successful farming. Hard, intelligent work is the key. Use it, and your chances for success are good.

History shows that people who save and invest grown and prosper, and the others deteriorate and collapse.

Life is a battlefield. I don't have enough time on the planet to play games.

We don't just get our choice; we get the consequence that choice creates.

In our day the conventional element in literature is elaborately disguised by a law of copyright pretending that every work of art is an invention distinctive enough to be patented.

Fortunately we're not a public company - we're a private group of companies, and I can do what I want.

So much time is currently spent in worrying about the future that the present is allowed to go to hell.

Politicians are leeches, mostly.