UPSC Express

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.

Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

Our patience will achieve more than our force.

You can never plan the future by the past.

He that struggles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.

People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.

Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.

All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.

Good order is the foundation of all things.

Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair.

It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.

But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.

A State without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.

It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.

Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing.

The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.