Principal Quotes

Men are driven by two principal impulses, either by love or by fear. (Niccolò Machiavelli)
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man. View quote
Mark Twain
All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives. View quote
Bertrand Russell
Light, God's eldest daughter, is a principal beauty in a building. View quote
Thomas Fuller
Those who make their dress a principal part of themselves, will, in general, become of no more value than their dress. View quote
William Hazlitt
Frugality is founded on the principal that all riches have limits. View quote
Edmund Burke
The principal subject is the surface, which has its color, its laws over and above those of object. View quote
Pierre Bonnard
Change is the principal feature of our age and literature should explore how people deal with it. The best science fiction does that, head-on. View quote
David Brin
Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principal one was that they escaped teething. View quote
Mark Twain
Time passed by. I had furnished steam hammers to the principal foundries in England. I had sent them abroad, even to Russia. At length it became known to the Lords of the Admiralty that a new power in forging had been introduced. (James Nasmyth)
Irreligion - the principal one of the great faiths of the world. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
My principal anguish, and the wellspring of all my joys and sorrows, has been the incessant merciless battle between the spirit and the flesh. View quote
Nikos Kazantzakis
I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. View quote
Bertrand Russell
Ninety percent of [contemporary philosophers] see their principal task as that of beating religion out of men's heads. ... We are far from being able to provide scientific basis for the theological world view. View quote
Kurt Gödel
To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues. View quote
John Locke
Thus the Age of Reason has turned out to be the Age of Structure; a time when, in the absence of purpose, the drive for power as a value in itself has become the principal indicator of social approval. And the winning of power has become the measure of social merit. View quote
John Ralston Saul
When running a Ponzi scheme, how does one avoid enormous, unexpected withdrawals - runs on the bank, so to speak - that would pull back the curtain and reveal a little man blowing smoke? One way would be to attract a core of investors who could be counted on to never withdraw more than a small percentage of principal each year. View quote
Mitchell Zuckoff
I would have thought it possible to choose delegates for these larger conferences who, even if they could not speak the principal languages, could at least understand them or could have friends seated beside them who could keep them informed on essential points. View quote
Fredrik Bajer
War, we are told, shapes character; it resolves the major questions of international politics, consolidates nations, and indeed, constitutes the principal factor in the progress of civilization through its successive stages. View quote
Elie Ducommun
If I were John Bolton, I'd take great consolation in the words of my principal supporter on the committee, who gave a ringing endorsement, which was, There is no evidence that he has broken any laws. (Mark Shields)
No one is ignorant that there are two avenues by which opinions are received into the soul, which are its two principal powers: the understanding and the will. View quote
Blaise Pascal
Art is the principal way in which the human mind has tried to remake the world in a way that makes sense. The carefully edited, slow-motion, action replay of a rugby tackle, a car crash or a sex act has more significance than the original event. Thanks to virtual reality, we will soon be moving into a world where a heightened super-reality will consist entirely of action replays, and reality will therefore be all the more rich and meaningful. View quote
J. G. Ballard
I studied the Quran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. As far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion more to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself. View quote
Alexis de Tocqueville
All of the members of my new team have displayed in their work a strong sense of pragmatism that I promote... The backgrounds of principal officials are diverse, they all share a common commitment to our country, our territory and our people and agree with my governing philosophy. View quote
Donald Tsang