A coward calls himself cautious, a miser thrifty.
Laws are silent in time of war.
It is not enough to acquire wisdom, it is necessary to employ it.
For out of such an ungoverned populace one is usually chosen as a leader, someone bold and unscrupulous who curries favor with the people by giving them other men's property. To such a man the protection of public office is given, and continually renewed. He emerges as a tyrant over the very people who raised him to power.
Whatever is graceful is virtuous, and whatever is virtuous is graceful.
A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.
More is lost by indecision than wrong decision. Indecision is the thief of opportunity. It will steal you blind.
What passes for identity in America is a series of myths about one's heroic ancestors.
Photography is an austere and blazing poetry of the real.
I think when you're doing something cutting edge like 'The Matrix,' it might mean when everybody's saying 'no' that you're really on the right track.
Different types of dangerous lives-You have no idea what you are living through; you rush through life as if you were drunk and now and then fall down some staircase. But thanks to your drunkenness you never break a limb; your muscles are too relaxed and your brain too benighted for you to find the stones of these stairs as hard as we do.