Imperium Quotes

“Power brings a man many luxuries, but a clean pair of hands is seldom among them.”
― Robert Harris, Imperium

“Cicero smiled at us. 'The art of life is to deal with problems as they arise, rather than destory one's spirit by worrying about them too far in advance. Especially tonight.”
― Robert Harris, Imperium

“You can always spot a fool, for he is a man who will tell you he knows who is going to win an election.”
― Robert Harris, Imperium

“It is perseverance, and not genius that takes a man to the top. Rome is full of unrecognized geniuses. Only perseverance enables you to move forward in the world.”
― Robert Harris, Imperium

“Another of Cicero's maxims was that if you must do something unpopular, you might as well do it wholeheartedly, for in politics there is no credit to be won by timidity.”
― Robert Harris, Imperium

“Politics? Boring? Politics is history on the wing! What other sphere of human activity calls forth all that is most noble in men's souls, and all that is most base? Or has such excitement? Or more vividly exposes our strengths and weaknesses? Boring? You might as well say that life itself is boring!”
― Robert Harris, Imperium

“Eloquence which does not startle I don’t consider eloquence.” CICERO, LETTER TO BRUTUS, 48 B.C.”
― Robert Harris, Imperium

“Sometimes it is foolish to articulate an ambition too early--exposing it prematurely to the laughter and skepticism of the world can destroy it before it is even properly born. But sometimes the opposite occurs, and the very act of mentioning a thing makes it suddenly seem possible, even plausible.”
― Robert Harris, Imperium

“Sometimes," he said, summing up the discussion with an aphorism I have never forgotten, "if you find yourself stuck in politics, the thing to do is start a fight--start a fight, even if you do not know how you are going to win it, because it is only when a fight is on, and everything is in motion, that you can hope to see your way through.”
― Robert Harris, Imperium

“I found, for example, that Cicero was fond of repeating certain phrases, and these I learned to reduce to a line, or even a few dots--thus proving what most people already know, that politicians essentially say the same thing over and over again.”
― Robert Harris, Imperium

“Tak usah cemas, akan banyak waktu untuk tidur setelah kita mati.”
― Robert Harris, Imperium

“He lived alone, in a small house full of books, and did nothing all day except read and think—a most dangerous occupation for a man, which in my experience leads invariably to dyspepsia and melancholy”
― Robert Harris, Imperium

“No one can really claim to know politics properly until he has stayed up all night writing a speech for delivery the following day. While the world sleeps, the orator paces by lamplight, wondering what madness ever brought him to this occupation in the first place. Arguments are prepared and discarded. The exhausted mind ceases to have any coherent grip upon the purpose of the enterprise, so that often--usually an hour or two after midnight--there comes a point where failing to turn up, feigning illness, and hiding at home seem the only realistic options. And then, somehow, just asa panic and humiliation beckon, the parts cohere, and there it is: a speech. A second-rate orator now retires gratefully to bed. A Cicero stays up and commits it to memory.”
― Robert Harris, Imperium

“What a heap of ash most political careers amount to, when one really stops to consider them!”
― Robert Harris, Imperium

“History has always fascinated me. As Cicero himself once wrote: ‘To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?’ I quickly forgot the cold and could have spent all day happily unwinding that roll, poring over the events of more than sixty years before.”
― Robert Harris, Imperium

“You can always spot a fool, for he is the man who will tell you he knows who is going to win an election. But an election is a living thing -- you might almost say, the most vigorously alive thing there is -- with thousands upon thousands of brains and limbs and eyes and thoughts and desires, and it will wriggle and turn and run off in directions no one ever predicted, sometimes just for the joy of proving the wiseacres wrong.”
― Robert Harris, Imperium

“Let us drink to pointless heroism.”
― Robert Harris, Imperium

“vita umbratilis,”
― Robert Harris, Imperium

“Then came a volley of colorful abuse, delivered in such an imperious voice, at at such a volume, that Terentia's distant ancestor, who had commanded the Roman line against Hannibal at Cannae a century and a half before, must surely have sat bolt upright in his tomb.”
― Robert Harris, Imperium

“Ich stellte mir seine Gedanken als einen schnellen, schmalen Wasserstrom vor, der sich durch die Fugen eines gefliesten Bodens bewegte - erst vorwärts, dann nach links und rechts ausgreifend, an einem Punkt kurz innehaltend, in eine andere Richtung weiter vorstoßend, sich immer weiter ausbreitend und verzweigend und dabei in seiner schimmernden, flüssigen Bewegung all die kleinen Möglichkeiten, Kosequenzen und Wahrscheinlichkeiten bedenkend.”
― Robert Harris, Imperium

“It is in the nature of things that not all politicians can achieve greatness.”
― Robert Harris, Imperium

“Since when has idiocy been a bar to advancement in politics?”
― Robert Harris, Imperium

“That so many people can derive so much pleasure from such a revolting spectacle,” he said to me when he returned home that night, “almost makes one doubt the very premise on which democracy is based.” But he was pleased nevertheless that the masses now thought of him as a good sport, as well as “the Scholar” and “the Greek.”
― Robert Harris, Imperium

“Politics is a country idiot capable of concentrating on only one thing at a time.”
― Robert Harris, Imperium

“if you find yourself stuck in politics, the thing to do is start a fight—start a fight, even if you do not know how you are going to win it, because it is only when a fight is on, and everything is in motion, that you can hope to see your way through.”
― Robert Harris, Imperium

“I sense that I am dawdling in this narrative, having already reached my eighth roll of Hieratica, and need to speed it up a little, else either I shall die on the job, or you will be worn out reading.”
― Robert Harris, Imperium

“YOU CAN ALWAYS SPOT A FOOL, for he is the man who will tell you he knows who is going to win an election”
― Robert Harris, Imperium

“Rome is not defined by rivers, or mountains, or even seas; Rome is not a question of blood, or race, or religion; Rome is an ideal. Rome is the highest embodiment of liberty and law that mankind has yet achieved in the ten thousand years since our ancestors came down from those mountains and learned how to live as communities under the rule of law.”
― Robert Harris, Imperium

“There are few forces in politics harder to resist than a feeling that something is inevitable,”
― Robert Harris, Imperium

“Always very pious, these crooked accountants,’ observed Cicero.)”
― Robert Harris, Imperium