[S]trength of character does not consist solely in having powerful feelings, but in maintaining one’s balance in spite of them. Even with the violence of emotion, judgment and principle must still function like a ship’s compass, which records the slightest variations however rough the sea.
Carl von Clausewitz, On War (1832), Book I, Chapter Three.
When one’s friends and enemies agree on any particular point they are usually wrong.
Saki, The Unbearable Bassington, first page (1912).
Most government and corporate leaders would have trouble getting people to follow them out of a burning building. One way you can tell the worst of them is that they talk about leadership a lot. I doubt Winston Churchill ever used the word. Or, for that matter, Attila the Hun.
Jack McDevitt, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 5.
Society . . . as it becomes more enlightened, should be very careful not to establish bodies of men who must necessarily be made foolish or vicious by the very constitution of their profession.
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), chapter one.
All the public business in Congress now connects itself with intrigues, and there is great danger that the whole government will degenerate into a struggle of cabals.
Criminals are never materially handicapped by such rules; the only effect is to disarm the peaceful citizen and put him fully at the mercy of the lawless. Such rules look very pretty on paper; in practice they are as foolish and footless as the attempt of the mice to bell the cat. Such is my thesis, that the licensing of weapons is subversive of liberty and self-defeating in its pious purpose.
Robert A. Heinlein, Letter to Alice Dalgliesh, the editor who was censoring his manuscript for Red Planet, regarding firearm registration and control.
It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.
J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King (1955), the final volume of the fantasy classic The Lord of the Rings.
I don’t deserve a share in governing a hen-roost, much less a nation. Nor do most people — all the people who believe advertisements, and think in catchwords and spread rumors. The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.
There is one thing no head of a country can know, and that is: how good is his intelligence system? He finds out only by having it fail him.
Robert A. Heinlein, The Puppet Masters (1951), Chapter 1 (p. 7, Signet (#W7339)).
The many Hundreds of Thousands, that are now in Slavery, were they at Liberty, as we are, had the same Education, Learning, Conversation, Books, sweet Communion in our Religious Assemblies; I believe many of them would exceed many of their Tyrant Masters in Piety, Virtue and Godliness; and their bright Genius, which I know they have, would be inlivened; for I have converst with many of them, for Liberty is Life, and Slavery is Death, nay the very thoughts of it to the right thinking Animal, as Man or Woman.
Benjamin Lay, All Slave-Keepers That keep the Innocent in Bondage, Apostates, page 56, published by its author in Philadelphia in 1737, printed by Benjamin Franklin.
The depiction of Lay, above, is as painted by William Williams in 1750. Lay was short, standing at just over four feet.