People may be persuaded that the machine is doing good. In fact, good is only capable of being done on a small scale. Evil is more versatile. You can hate those you have never seen,...

What men do matters more than what they know.

We all have to learn to live with our losses, and to use our regrets to spur us on in the future.

Fritz was melancholic by nature, and could tolerate his own gloom. I do not think this is so with you, who are sanguine and impatient. In your case, remorse and despondency could be crippling.

Morality, for all the conditioning to which the human mind has been and is subjected, is always a personal choice in the last analysis.

I think before I act—and then think again. I am not entirely a coward, but I do not lose myself in action as you do.

Truth does not surround itself with lies.

And though I remember her name I cannot recall her face. All things pass.

The secret of success in battle lies often not so much in the use of one’s own strength but in the exploitation of the other side’s weaknesses.

He said, speaking more to himself than to me: ‘It was knowledge I sought. Knowledge which is clean and pure, far above the cheating and deceiving in which most men spend their lives.’And do you...

His anger was as great as mine, but hot where mine was cold.

There are disappointments in all men’s lives, even those who have achieved their ambition, and there are compensations.

I was remembering the things we had done together, the times we had had. It would have been pleasant to preserve that comradeship in the days that came after. Pleasant, but alas, impossible. That which...

The order should not have been given,’ she said. ‘It was not done for the city but for your private ends.’I shook my head. ‘There is no difference.’You believe that?’A Prince must, or he is...

And a leader has to command confidence, and consent.

It is because they are so strong that she hides her feelings.

More and more I had come to see the Capped as lacking what seemed to me the essence of humanity, the vital spark of defiance against the rulers of the world.

You would always beat me; not so much because you are a better fighter as because you will not accept defeat.

Even if it is nonsense, it is often useful to know what kind of nonsense men believe.

As Pa said, censorship encouraged people to believe nonsense.

A man faced death, but when death drew back forgot it until the next time.

He was sometimes stern but more often kindly—just according to his lights, but he saw the world in simple shades of black and white, and found it hard to be patient with things that struck...

What tricks the mind is what the mind is glad to be tricked by.

In the realm of dream and imagination all men are equal.