It serves always to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration. It agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection.

I am sometimes a fox and sometimes a lion. The whole secret of government lies in knowing when to be the one or the other.

One must change one's tactics every ten years if one wishes to maintain one's superiority.

One should never forbid what one lacks the power to prevent.

Obedience to public authority ought not to be based either on ignorance or stupidity.

In order to govern, the question is not to follow out a more or less valid theory but to build with whatever materials are at hand. The inevitable must be accepted and turned to advantage.