Good governance never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will of those who administer that machinery. The most important element of government, therefore, is the method of choosing leaders.
Politics: the art of appearing candid and completely open while concealing as much as possible.
The function of science fiction is not always to predict the future but sometimes to prevent it.
Caution is the path to mediocrity. Gliding, passionless mediocrity is all that most people think they can achieve.
Most believe that a satisfactory future requires a return to an idealized past, a past which never in fact existed.
It is impossible to live in the past, difficult to live in the present and a waste to live in the future.
When you think you know something: that is a most perfect barrier against learning.
Governments can be useful to the governed only so long as inherent tendencies toward tyranny are restrained.
Silence is often the best thing to say.
It is a wise man that does know the contented man is never poor, whilst the discontented man is never rich.
Education is no substitute for intelligence.
When a wise man does not understand, he says: "I do not understand." The fool and the uncultured are ashamed of their ignorance. They remain silent when a question could bring them wisdom.
Power attracts the corruptible. Suspect any who seek it.
When I need to identify rebels, I look for men with principles
If you live in bad faith, lies will appear to you like the truth.
Reason is the first victim of strong emotion.
Every civilization depends upon the quality of the individuals it produces.
All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.
Small souls who seek power over others first destroy the faith those others might have in themselves.
Every civilization depends on the quality of the individuals it produces. If you over-organize humans, over-legalize them, suppress their urge to greatness-they cannot work and their civilization collapses.
Always prepare secondary ways of dealing with problems.
I don’t think it’s quite that simple. Some people never observe anything, Life just happens to them. They get by on little more than a kind of dumb persistence, and they resist with anger and resentment anything that might lift them out of that false serenity.
No matter how much we ask after the truth, self-awareness is often unpleasant. We do not feel kindly toward the Truthsayer.
Kindness is the beginning of cruelty.
Truth suffers from too much analysis.
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