Silenceis as full of potential wisdom and wit as the unshown marble of greatsculpture. The silent bear no witness against themselves.

There is no evil in the atoms, only in men's souls.

Can we do good to the world? In an absolute sense, no; in a relative sense, yes.

Adversity attracts the man of character. He seeks out the better joy, responsibility.

Tofight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supremeexcellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.

It isnot necessary to understand things in order to argue about them.

The rulers must be watched, not the ruled.

A lost battle is a battle one thinks one has lost.

It is a strange desire, to seek power, and to loseliberty; or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man's self.

We arethe prisoners of ideas.

A rumor goes in one ear and out many mouths.

The exercise of power is determined by thousands ofinteractions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, allthe more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line: everyonehas a small part of himself in both.