"The truth brings no man a fortune."
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"There are means that cannot be excused. And I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice. I don't want just any greatness for it, particularly a greatness born of blood and falsehood. I want to keep it alive by keeping justice alive."
— Albert Camus

"[Otto von Bismarck] only considered the interests of his own country - always the worst offense that a statesman can commit in the eyes of foreigners."
— A.J.P. Taylor (Bismarck: The Man and the Statesman)

"Politics are not a science based on logic; they are the capacity of always choosing at each instant, in constantly changing situations, the least harmful, the most useful."
— Otto von Bismarck

"History is never tidy."
— Antony Beevor (The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939)

"If you want to go public with your opinions, then someone is going to judge you a moron. And there is always a risk that you may be."
— Isaac Kramnick (The Godless Constitution: A Moral Defense of the Secular State)

"If we believe absurdities we shall commit atrocities."
— Voltaire

"Popular disregard, even disdain, for demonstrable truth is the most dangerous thing that can happen to a democracy."
— Gordy Slack (The Battle Over the Meaning of Everything: Evolution, Intelligent Design, and a School Board in Dover, PA)

"[I]n politics, reputation is the prologue to fact..."
— Todd Gitlin (The Bulldozer and the Big Tent: Blind Republicans, Lame Democrats, and the Recovery of American Ideals)

""...foreign policy is a matter of costs and benefits, not theology.""
— Fareed Zakaria (The Post-American World)