The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour.

Somewhere it is written that parents who are critical of other people’s children and publicly admit they can do better are asking for it.

Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root.

Man is a universe within himself.

People may hear your words, but they feel your attitude.

Praise undeserved, is satire in disguise.

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

When one travels around the world, one notices to what an extraordinary degree human nature is the same, whether in India or America, in Europe or Australia.

When you say ‚follow me on Twitter,‘ and you get 10 million people to follow you – you just leveraged your influence to add value to an app that you have no ownership in.

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

I would be loath to speak ill of any person who I do not know deserves it, but I am afraid he is an attorney.

Right after the assassination of Osama bin Laden, amid all the cheers and applause, there were a few critical comments questioning the legality of the act.

The public is the only critic whose opinion is worth anything at all.

I don’t think it’s a good advert for any restaurant, a fat chef, and secondly, who wants to eat a dessert when the chef’s a fat pig.

I was warped early by Ray Bradbury and Edgar Allan Poe. I was very fond of Franz Kafka.

We humans are self-absorbed by nature, and spend most of our time focusing inwardly on our emotions, on our wounds, on our fantasies.

A whole people with the ballot in their hands possess the most conclusive and unlimited power ever entrusted to humanity.

By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.

If human beings were shown what they’re really like, they’d either kill one another as vermin, or hang themselves.

Power has only one duty – to secure the social welfare of the People.

A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over… is saying no good son should warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen.

Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power.

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.

The effect of power and publicity on all men is the aggravation of self, a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim’s sympathies.

I think we all change each other’s paths. I don’t know which law idea that is in physics, but I don’t think any of us can live without affecting one another.

There are massive efforts on the part of the internet’s corporate owners to try to direct it to become a technique of marginalisation and control.

The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that… it is their right and duty to be at all times armed.

He chose to honor us with His priesthood. So we honor Him by honoring His priesthood – both its power and those who bear it.

Mankind, when left to themselves, are unfit for their own government.

Man’s nature is not essentially evil. Brute nature has been known to yield to the influence of love. You must never despair of human nature.

All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours.

It is a true rule that love is ever rewarded, either with the reciproque or with an inward and secret contempt.

The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

I look forward to a great future for America – a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose.

I heard that when Christina Aguilera went back to her prom, people, like, booed her. I can’t imagine going through that. If you know that’s going to happen, why put yourself in that situation? I’d rather play for 20,000 screaming people, you know?

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain – and most fools do.

Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body.

I am not interested in power for power’s sake, but I’m interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good.

Man is, properly speaking, based upon hope, he has no other possession but hope; this world of his is emphatically the place of hope.

You see, I am trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across – not to just depict life – or criticize it – but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me, you actually experience the thing. You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful.

On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.

Everyone who is critical of Israeli policy is deluged by crazed messages intended to flood their email system or, more insidiously, passwords are accessed and messages sent out under their name! I’m sure it’s illegal. It’s also an effort to undermine free speech.

I’ve just had eighteen straight whiskies. I think that’s the record.

Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order.

Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.

Romcoms are hard in a lot of ways: they’re built to be buoyant. It’s easy to demean them.

As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.

What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking.

Our chief justices have probably had more profound and lasting influence on their times and on the direction of the nation than most presidents.

He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.

Power is the great aphrodisiac.

The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively.

The wicked leader is he who the people despise. The good leader is he who the people revere. The great leader is he who the people say, ‚We did it ourselves.‘

It is good taste, and good taste alone, that possesses the power to sterilize and is always the first handicap to any creative functioning.

The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society.

Films and television and even comic books are churning out vast quantities of fictional narratives, and the public continues to swallow them up with great passion. That is because human beings need stories.

It is wise to persuade people to do things and make them think it was their own idea.

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

It’s human nature to not say everything that’s on your mind at the time you think it. Because we fear saying something that people will laugh at, people will think is dumb. We’re afraid of being embarrassed.

The ultimate tendency of civilization is towards barbarism.