Quotes to inspire and reflect

The great man is too often all of a piece; it is the little man that is a bundle of contradictory elements. He is inexhaustible. You never come to the end of the surprises he has in store for you.

I will be small in small things, great among great.

From the height from which the great look down on the world all the rest of mankind seem equal.

The privilege and pleasure / That we treasure beyond measure / Is to run on little errands for the Ministers of State.

When the house of a great one collapses / Many little ones are slain.

A great man stands on God. A small man stands on a great man.

For all that you have done, I am ever mindful. How can you doubt that I ever forgot it—but don’t remind me of it too much at this time.

Gratitude is a debt which usually goes on accumulating like blackmail; the more you pay, the more is exacted.

God give you pardon from gratitude / and other mild forms of servitude.

Bees sip honey from flowers and hum their thanks when they leave. / The gaudy butterfly is sure that the flowers owe thanks to him.

It is well to remember that grammar is common speech formulated.

Damn the subjunctive. It brings all our writers to shame.

Grammar, n. A system of pitfalls thoughtfully prepared for the feet of the self-made man, along the path by which he advances to distinction.

Grace is the absence of everything that indicates pain or difficulty, hesitation or incongruity.

Man is about the same, in the main, whether with despotism, or whether with freedom.

Governments are best classified by considering who are the “somebodies” they are in fact endeavoring to satisfy.

History is replete with proofs, from Cato the Elder to Kennedy the Younger, that if you scratch a statesman you find an actor, but it is becoming harder and harder, in our time, to tell government from show business.

The pleasure of governing must certainly be exquisite, if we may judge from the vast numbers who are eager to be concerned with it.

Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.

In our complex world, there cannot be fruitful initiative without government, but unfortunately there can be government without initiative.

It is the purpose of the government to see that not only the legitimate interests of the few are protected but that the welfare and rights of the many are conserved.

The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries in itself the causes of its destruction.

I have always thought of government as a kind of organism with an insatiable appetite for money, whose natural state is to grow forever unless you do something to starve it.

It is very easy to accuse a government of imperfection, for all mortal things are full of it.

It must be that to govern a nation you need a specific talent and that this may very well exist without general ability.

Virtue alone is not sufficient for the exercise of government; laws alone cannot carry themselves into practice.

It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination.

no form of government / matters nearly as much / as the spirit and intelligence / brought to the administration / of any form of government.

Any system of government will work when everything is going well. It’s the system that functions in the pinches that survives.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.

Chaos and ineptitude are anti-human; but so too is a superlatively efficient government, equipped with all the products of a highly developed technology.

In a healthy nation there is a kind of dramatic balance between the will of the people and the government, which prevents its degeneration into tyranny.

Only one in command: that’s the way in the home / And the way in the state when it must find / Measures best for mankind.

Every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details, which must be attended to if rules have to be adapted to different men, instead of indiscriminately subjecting all men to the same rule.

Nations it may be have fashioned their Governments, but the Governments have paid them back in the same coin.

The requisites of government are that there be sufficiency of food, sufficiency of military equipment, and the confidence of the people in their ruler.

In the long-run every government is the exact symbol of its people, with their wisdom and unwisdom.

That rule is the better which is exercised over better subjects.

Administration, n. An ingenious abstraction in politics, designed to receive the kicks and cuffs due to the premier or president.

The divine science of government is the science of social happiness, and the blessings of society depend entirely on the constitutions of government.

The essence of a free government consists in an effectual control of rivalries.

As the happiness of the people is the sole end of government, so the consent of the people is the only foundation of it.

Another good thing about gossip is that it is within / everybody’s reach, / And it is much more interesting than any / other form of speech.

Gossip is an evil thing by nature, she’s a light weight to lift up, / oh very easy, but heavy to carry, and hard to put down again.

To create an unfavourable impression, it is not necessary that certain things should be true, but that they have been said.

The best loved man or maid in the town would perish with anguish / Could they hear all that their friends say in the course of a day.

Out of some little thing, too free a tongue / Can make an outrageous wrangle.