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.

It is better to inspire a reform than to enforce it.

Happiness and unhappiness are in the heart and spirit of each one of us: If you feel unhappy, then place yourself above that and act so that your happiness does not get to be dependent on anything.

You philosophers are lucky men. You write on paper and paper is patient. Unfortunate Empress that I am, I write on the susceptible skins of living beings.

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

Very early it was noticed that I had a good memory; therefore I was insistently tormented with learning everything by heart.

It is necessary sometimes to take one step backward to take two steps forward.

I think the international community should unite to fight such inhuman phenomena as terror attacks and the murder of totally innocent people.

The masses go into a revolution not with a prepared plan of social reconstruction, but with a sharp feeling that they cannot endure the old regime. Only the guiding layers of a class have a political program, and even this still requires the test of events and the approval of the masses.

You cannot make a revolution with silk gloves.

Science is a bit like the joke about the drunk who is looking under a lamppost for a key that he has lost on the other side of the street, because that’s where the light is. It has no other choice.

Once his wife goes to sleep it takes a minor nuclear explosion to wake her.

The commentators of 1963 speak, in discussing Africa, of the Monrovia States, the Brazzaville Group, the Casablanca Powers, of these and many more. Let us put an end to these terms. What we require is a single African organisation through which Africa’s single voice may be heard, within which Africa’s problems may be studied and resolved.

Don’t be a bottleneck. If a matter is not a decision for the President or you, delegate it. Force responsibility down and out. Find problem areas, add structure and delegate. The pressure is to do the reverse. Resist it.

Crazy Dennis Rodman is saying I wanted to go to North Korea with him. Never discussed, no interest, last place on Earth I want to go to.

Surely, God on high has not refused to give us enough wisdom to find ways to bring us an improvement in relations between the two great nations on earth.

Ultimately it’s a question of whether democracy is going to be allowed to exist, and to what extent. And it’s entirely natural that the business world, along with the state, which they largely dominate, would want to limit democracy. It threatens them.

I said on the Department of Justice, I would stay uninvolved. Now I may get involved at some point if it gets worse.

We believe that Lebanon has been the first real experience for all the Arabs.

[on Donald Trump] I can’t believe that I’m saying that a candidate for president of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women.

Jeb said, ‘we were safe with my brother. We were safe.’ Well, the World Trade Center just fell down! Now, am I trying to blame him? I’m not blaming anybody. But the World Trade Center came down. So when he said, we were safe, that’s not safe.