Grantgraciously what you cannot refuse safely and conciliate those you cannotconquer.

Knowingthat everything's futile but still fighting, still raging against the dying ofthe light that's what motivates me all the time ... If you hold that sense offutility in your head for too long, it can begin to eat into you. You canstill be aware of it

The louder the talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons.

You can outdistance that which is running after you, but not what is running insideyou.

Lookingfor fish? Don't climb a tree.

Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establisha dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolutionin order to establish the dictatorship.

No battle is more sorely lost that the one not fought

Onelearns by doing the thing; for though you think you know it, you have nocertainty until you try.

Kindwords do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.

Human beings are not perfectible. They are improvable.

Nothing so wonderfully concentrates the mind as theprospect of a hanging.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.