Catherine the Great

I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.

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.

Don’t worry about things you cannot alter.

God, grant us our desires, and grant them quickly.

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

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.

The little I know I owe to my ignorance.

We want to reproduce all those instruments which were prepared and used in America once upon a time.

Flawed and (still) worthy.

The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

I’m beginning to understand myself. But it would have been great to be able to understand myself when I was 20 rather than when I was 82.

Most fashionable commodity in US is going to be old-fashioned common sense and work.

Sometimes our idea of luxuries are our client’s ideas of necessities. You might think having a helicopter pad in the back garden, 20 housekeepers and two tennis coaches is over the top. But for them it’s like you buying a sandwich.

An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex.

Setting an example is not the main means of influencing others; it is the only means.

You must demand nothing less than the best of yourself and for yourself. You must tell yourself that it is not wrong to want it all.

It’s so much easier to tell people what they want to hear instead of what they need to hear.

It is better to fail at your own life than to succeed at someone else’s.

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

I have my faults, but changing my tune is not one of them.

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.