If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it.
Julius CaesarRead
Caesar's wife must be above suspicion.
Interpretation
Integrity and moral standards are essential for those in power.
The quote emphasizes the importance of maintaining a reputation free from doubt or suspicion, particularly for individuals in positions of authority. It suggests that leaders must uphold a higher standard of conduct, as their actions and associations can greatly impact perceptions of their integrity and the trust bestowed upon them by others.
In practice
In a discussion about ethics in leadership, one might say, 'Remember, Caesar's wife must be above suspicion.'
If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it.
War gives the right to the conquerors to impose any condition they please upon the vanquished.
I have always reckoned the dignity of the republic of first importance and preferable to life.
As a rule, men worry more about what they can't see than about what they can.
All bad precedents begin as justifiable measures.
No one is so brave that he is not disturbed by something unexpected.
A man's conscience and his judgment is the same thing; and as the judgment, so also the conscience, may be erroneous.
In the vast cosmical changes, the universal life comes and goes in unknown quantities, ... sowing an animalcule here, crumbling a star there, oscillating and ... entangling, from the highest to the lowest, all activities in the obscurity of a dizzying mechanism, hanging the flight of an insect upon the movement of the earth... Enormous gearing, whose first motor is the gnat, and whose last wheel is the zodiac.
We don't realize how much racism has tainted our self-image as human beings.
Genuflection before the idol or the dollar destroys the muscles which walk and the will that moves.
I am still so naïve; I know pretty much what I like and dislike; but please, don’t ask me who I am. A passionate, fragmentary girl, maybe?
It will be forgotten, on the one hand, that jealousy is the usual concomitant of violent love, and that the noble enthusiasm of liberty is too apt to be infected with a spirit of narrow and illiberal distrust. On the other hand, it will be equally forgotten, that the vigour of government is essential to the security of liberty.
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