Catherine the Great Quotes

Great and good are seldom the same man.

Circumstances do not make the man, they reveal him.

Governor [Myron] Herrick is not a bad man; he is simply weak. He is one of those men who can do dishonest things honestly.

Politicians are not the most reflective people in the world.

It is their character indeed that makes people who they are. But it is by reason of their actions that they are happy or the reverse.

Character: the grandest thing in the world.

A great man’s actions are determined, if not foreordained, by his character.

Lincoln was a supreme politician. He understood politics because he understood human nature.

Donald Trump Jr. is a very honest, very high-integrity person. I have known him for a long time. I have an enormous amount of respect for him.

When you see Pep on TV or read his words in the newspaper, it is the portrait of a man who is the ultimate professional. But when you work with him, you don't just come to see him as a coach. You learn about his qualities as a man. It is that side of Pep Guardiola that the people on the outside don't get to see.

Teams really take into account character.

You can't wake up one morning and say, 'Right, now I'm going to be a leader.' I think it is something that's in you, that you're born with, and which develops. Some people have that character, that personality and it comes naturally. You can't force it. It has to be authentic and natural. Innate.

It is observed by Cicero, that men of the greatest and most shining parts are most actuated by ambition.

(Clothes) cannot change a man's nature. He's either kind or he isn't, with or without clothes.

Competitiveness is a personality thing and competitive people don't become pushovers the day they turn fifty.

There appears to be but two grand master passions or movers in the human mind, namely, love and pride. And what constitutes the beauty or deformity of a man's character is the choice he makes under which banner he determines to enlist himself. But there is a strong distinction between different degress in the same thing and a mixture of two contraries.

The courage of a great many men, and the virtue of a great many women, are the effect of vanity, shame, and especially a suitabletemperament.

Others are to us like the characters in fiction, eternal and incorrigible; the surprises they give us turn out in the end to have been predictable and unexpected variations on the theme of being themselves.

Cute's good. But cute only lasts for so long, and then it's, 'Who are you as a person?' Look at the heart. Look at the soul. Look at how the guy treats his mother and what he says about women. How he acts with children he doesn't know. And, more important, how does he treat you?

A forte always makes a foible.

I certainly don't see myself as Caligula.

Hitler's success was not based on his extraordinary gifts alone. His genius was an intuitive sense of the mushiness, the character flaws, the weakness masquerading as morality that was in the hearts of the statesmen who stood in his path.

It is the prerogative of great men only to have great defects.

One of the troubles of our times is that we are all, I think, precocious as personalities and backward as characters.

Not every great man is a grand human being.