Catherine the Great

Tell a thousand people to draft a letter, let them debate every phrase, and see how long it takes and what you get.

I like to praise and reward in a loud voice and to scold in a whisper.

One does not always do the best there is. One does the best one can. – Catherine the Great

Experience shows that the frequent use of severe punishment has never rendered a people better. The death of a criminal is a less effective means of restraining crimes than the permanent example of a man deprived of his liberty during the whole of his life to make amends for the injury he has done to the public.

If Russians knew how to read they would write me off.

All punishments by which the human body might be maimed are barbarbarism.

Since when is “public safety” the root password to the Constitution?

Romanticism implies nostalgia for damaged goods.

It doesn’t matter how long my hair is or what colour my skin is or whether I’m a woman or a man.

All heiresses are beautiful.

The Internet is just bringing all kinds of information into the home. There’s just a lot of distraction, a lot of competition for the parent’s voice to resonate in the children’s ears.

Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.

Vision without execution is just hallucination.

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

No matter how carefully and assiduously and how deeply you bury shit, the American public will find it and buy it in large quantity, It’s true, absolutely true.

Smiling is one of the highest forms of meditation.

The conception of two people living together for twenty-five years without having a cross word suggests a lack of spirit only to be admired in sheep.

You need to face the pain and the fear and walk through the Grief.

This is the only reason Greenfield Village exists-to give us a sense of unity with our people through the generations, and to convey the inspiration of American genius to our young men. As a nation we have not depended so much on rare or occasional genius as on the general resourcefulness of our people. That is our true genius, and I am hoping that Greenfield Village will serve that.

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiosity to know why this is so; but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger, and mosquitoes and silly people.