In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

A lie would have no sense unless the truth were felt as dangerous.

You only live once; but if you live it right, once is enough.

Any effort that has self-glorification as its final endpoint is bound to end in disaster.

The outward freedom that we shall attain will only be in exact proportion to the inward freedom to which we may have grown at a given moment. And if this is a correct view of freedom, our chief energy must be concentrated on achieving reform from within.

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging the future but by the past.

Know from whence you came. If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go.

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won even before you have started.

Politicians are like diapers. They both need changing regularly and for the same reason.