Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be.

Beauty is also submitted to the taste of time, so a beautiful woman from the Belle Epoch is not exactly the perfect beauty of today, so beauty is something that changes with time.

Little minds are interested in the extraordinary; great minds in the commonplace.

To me, constructive criticism is when people take ownership of their ideas. That’s why I don’t listen to anything that’s anonymous. But it’s hard; when there’s something hurtful out there, I still want to read it over and over and memorize it and explain my point of view to the person.

Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.

Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him.

If the United States loses the economic weapons of control, it is very much weakened.

My aim is to make the poor look rich and the rich look poor.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

I think the personal relationships I established mattered in terms of what I was able to get done. And I did bring women’s issues to the center of our foreign policy.

Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.

The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.

Look at situations from all angles, and you will become more open.

I have the people behind me and the people are my strength.

Around every corner, always protect the engine that powers you.

If my mother knew I did this for a living, she’d kill me. She thinks I’m selling dope.

He that is giddy thinks the world turns round.

Swimming has its educational value – mental, moral, and physical – in giving you a sense of mastery over an element, and of power of saving life, and in the development of wind and limb.

We are second-hand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences, and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves: nothing original, pristine, clear.

We do not see people as they are, but as they appear to us. And these appearances are usually misleading.

Strength and compassion are not mutually exclusive.

There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad.

Everybody has their thing they like or don’t like to see. It’s all in your head. That’s why people take their own pictures, because it’s difficult for someone else to capture what you seek.

For the bureaucrat, the world is a mere object to be manipulated by him.

It takes tremendous discipline to control the influence, the power you have over other people’s lives.

Men’s actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.

It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness.

I try to look on all the great things God’s done, and not focus on the negative. It’s a perspective.

Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law. If it goes past the centre of gravity on one side, it must go a like distance on the other; and it is only after a certain time that it finds the true point at which it can remain at rest.

My mother was very strong. Once, she picked up a coconut and smashed it against my father’s head. It taught me about women defending themselves and not collapsing in a heap.

I’m not confused. I’m just well mixed.

Humans cannot avoid trying to influence others. Everything we say or do is examined and interpreted by others for clues as to our intentions.

The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.

The nice thing about being a celebrity is that, if you bore people, they think it’s their fault.

People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.

It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it… anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

There are only two forces in the world, the sword and the spirit. In the long run the sword will always be conquered by the spirit.

The wise are wise only because they love. The fool are fools only because they think they can understand love.

For ideas to prevail, many of their defenders have to die in obscurity. Their anonymous influence makes itself felt.

Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone you can intimidate and win; once it slips, however, you are vulnerable, and will be attacked on all sides. Make your reputation unassailable.

A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.

A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone.

What I’d really like to control is not machines, but people.

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people.

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.

I have a hard time figuring out what kind of box to put me in, too, because I don’t know exactly what’s going on around me or why. But I need to stay outside of boxes because then I can look at what’s inside of them without being part of them.

I was terrible in English. I couldn’t stand the subject. It seemed to me ridiculous to worry about whether you spelled something wrong or not, because English spelling is just a human convention – it has nothing to do with anything real, anything from nature.

Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can’t see from the center.

‚Tis strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel.

In France there are, I think, less than one per cent of people who are too skinny.

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Power is the great aphrodisiac.

It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all.

Man has the power to act as his own destroyer – and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.

To observations which ourselves we make, we grow more partial for th‘ observer’s sake.

I know how fiction matters to me, because if I want to express myself, I have to make up a story. Some people call it imagination. To me, it’s not imagination. It’s just a way of watching.

Do something wonderful, people may imitate it.

Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.

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