Quotes by Statesmen - Page 13

Great art is always a way of concentrating, reinventing what is called fact, what we know of our existence- a reconcentration… tearing away the veils, the attitudes people acquire of their time and earlier time. Really good artists tear down those veils
Francis Bacon
The trip doesn’t exist that can set you beyond the reach of cravings, fits of temper, or fears … so long as you carry the sources of your troubles about with you, those troubles will continue to harass and plague you wherever you wander on land or on sea. Does it surprise you that running away doesn’t do you any good? The things you’re running away from are with you all the time.
Seneca
Literature decays only as men become more and more corrupt.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Your friend Plato holds that commonwealths will only be happy when either philosophers rule or rulers philosophize: how remote happiness must appear when philosophers won't even deign to share their thoughts with kings.
Thomas More
A mans manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Let them stew in their own grease (or juice).
Otto von Bismarck
He should as he list be able to prove the moon is green cheese.
Sir Thomas More
When an idea is wanting a word can always be found to take its place.
Goethe
We are never deceived we deceive ourselves.
Goethe
People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.
Edmund Burke
A disposition to preserve and an ability to improve taken together would be my standard of a statesman.
Edmund Burke
Reasoning draws a conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience.
Francis Bacon
Let this little book be thy friend, if, owing to fortune or through thine own fault, thou canst not find a dearer companion.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Talent is nurtured in solitude character is formed in the stormy billows of the world.
Goethe
Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes and adversity is not without comforts and hopes.
Francis Bacon
Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.
Sir Francis Bacon
History is a pact between the dead the living and the yet unborn.
Edmund Burke
It is said that no man is a hero to his valet. That is because a hero can be recognized only by a hero.
Goethe
If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.
Seneca
A man dies as often as he loses his friends.
Francis Bacon
A man finds himself seven years older the day after his marriage.
Sir Francis Bacon
We can be thankful to a friend for a few acres or a little money and yet for the freedom and command of the whole earth and for the great benefits of our being our life health and reason we look upon ourselves as under no obligation.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
Everything transitory is but an image.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Certainly, Gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinions high respect; their business unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his /pleasure, his satisfactions, to theirs/, --- and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own.But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgement, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure, --- no, nor from the law and the Constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your Representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinions.
Edmund Burke
Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.
Francis Bacon
man cannot control the current of events. he can only float with them and steer
Otto von Bismarck
If anyone says that the best life of all is to sail the sea, and then adds that I must not sail upon a sea where shipwrecks are a common occurrence and there are often sudden storms that sweep the helmsman in an adverse direction, I conclude that this man, although he lauds navigation, really forbids me to launch my ship.
Seneca
Legislators and revolutionaries who promise equality and liberty at the same time, are either psychopaths or mountebanks.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
He who has great power should use it lightly.
Seneca
Must it so be that whatever makes man happy must later become the source of his misery?
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The best slave is the one who thinks he is free.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Woe to the leader whose arguments at the end of a war are not as plausible as they were at the beginning.
Otto von Bismarck
We gave ourselves for lost men, and prepared for death. Yet we did lift up our hearts and voices to God above, who "showeth His wonders in the deep".
Francis Bacon
The best ideas are common property
Seneca
Crowned heads, wealth and privilege may well tremble should ever again the Black and Red unite!"-after the split between Anarchists and Marxists in 1872
Otto von Bismarck
Cursed Mammon be when he with treasures To restless action spurs our fate!
Goethe
Nothing can be compared to the new life that the discovery of another country provides for a thoughtful person. Although I am still the same I believe to have changed to the bones.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
He who is firm in will molds the world to himself.
Goethe
What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.
Seneca
Love sometimes injures. Friendship always benefits, After friendship is formed you must trust, but before that you must judge.
Seneca
Men learn while they teach.
Seneca
You can overcome anything if you don't bellyache.
Bernard M. Baruch
All government - indeed every human benefit and enjoyment every virtue and every prudent act - is founded on compromise and barter.
Edmund Burke
In taking revenge a man is but equal to his enemy but in passing it over he is his superior.
Sir Francis Bacon
To keep oneself safe does not mean to bury oneself.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
What a ruler has to rely upon is only the human heart. Human hearts are to the ruler what roots are to a tree, what oil is to a lamp, water to fish, fields to a farmer, or money to a merchant.
Su Shi
All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, until they take root in our personal experience.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Fidelity purchased with money, money can destroy.
Seneca
There is nothing in the world so much admired as a man who knows how to bear unhappiness with courage."— Seneca
Seneca
No one could endure lasting adversity if it continued to have the same force as when it first hit us. We are all tied to Fortune, some by a loose and golden chain, and others by a tight one of baser metal: but what does it matter? We are all held in the same captivity, and those who have bound others are themselves in bonds - unless you think perhaps that the left-hand chain is lighter. One man is bound by high office, another by wealth; good birth weighs down some, and a humble origin others; some bow under the rule of other men and some under their own; some are restricted to one place by exile, others by priesthoods: all life is a servitude.So you have to get used to your circumstances, complain about them as little as possible, and grasp whatever advantage they have to offer: no condition is so bitter that a stable mind cannot find some consolation in it.
Seneca
He who moves not forward, goes backward.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
All outdoors may be bedlam, provided there is no disturbance within.
Seneca
The conditions of conquest are always easy. We have but to toil awhile endure awhile believe always and never turn back.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
Whatever is well said by another is mine.
Seneca
It takes all of our life to learn how to live, and – something that may surprise you more – it takes just as long to learn how to die.
Seneca
Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.
Francis Bacon
Make up your minds that happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous.
Pericles
The people's government, made for the people, made by the people and answerable to the people.January 1830
Daniel Webster
The manner of your speaking is full as important as the matter as more people have ears to be tickled than understandings to judge.
Lord Chesterfield
Anger makes dull men witty but it keeps them poor.
Francis Bacon