Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

The good lawgiver should inquire how states and races of men and communities may participate in a good life, and in the happiness which is attainable by them.

I wanted to be president of the United States. I really did. The older I get, the less preposterous the idea seems.

Thou shalt be king so long as thou dost do right; but if thou do not do right, thou shalt no longer be king.

Politics is the art of human happiness.

To inject morality into politics, is, I have said, and I repeat, the watchword of all our efforts.

I have presidential size policy ambition. I just don't have presidencial size personal ambition.

If a ruler of men wants to put an end to vice, he must examine the correspondence between form and name and look to see how what is said differs from what is done.

How nations and races of men are to be so governed as may be most conducive to the improvement and happiness of all is one of the most interesting questions that can be offered to our consideration.

Let me make one thing clear. I have never considered mere survival in power as any achievement, just as I have never seen coming to power as an achievement in itself.

Kings fight for empires, madmen for applause.

If princes and kings could follow it (Tao), all things would by themselves abide, Heaven and Earth would unite and sweet dew would fall. People would by themselves find harmony, without being commanded.

The divine science of government is the science of social happiness, and the blessings of society depend entirely on the constitutions of government.

If no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capcity to govern someone else.

Don't confuse wealth with success.

Where can you find purpose? Like success and happiness, our purpose exists in the present, and we constantly strive toward the future to maintain it. What it is for which we strive is up to each of us. The important thing is that we strive toward something.

But I have learned that you make your own happiness, that part of going for what you want means losing something else. And when the stakes are high, the losses can be that much greater.

Education! Is it education to teach the young that their chances of happiness depend on being richer than their neighbors? Yet that is what it all tends to. Get on! - be successful!

Kings were wont to honour philosophers, but if I had such I would honour them as angels that should have such piety in them that they would not seek where they are the second to be the first, and where the third to be the second and so forth.

Gods be good, why would any man ever want to be king? When everyone was shouting King in the North, King in the North, I told myself ... swore to myself ... that I would be a good king, as honorable as Father, strong, just, loyal to my friends and brave when I faced my enemies ... now I can't even tell one from the other.

Making fun of anyone who seeks happiness rather than money and accusing them of "lacking ambition."

We must distinguish between felicity and prosperity; for prosperity leads often to ambition, and ambition to disappointment; the course is then over, the wheel turns round but once, while the reaction of goodness and happiness is perpetual.

I'm one of those people for whom success is one thing, but significance is another. If I can have both, I'm living the dream.

My new question was, What do you do when your dreams come true? My answer was: Find new ones.

People don't need love. What they need is success in one form or another. It can be love but it needn't be.

I thought, There goes my lord, whom I was born to follow. I have found a King. And, I said to myself, looking after him as he walked away, I will have him, if I die for it.