“It has been said that, given two bettors, there is always one thief and one imbecile; that is true in certain cases when one of the two bettors is much better informed than the other, and knows it; but it can easily happen that two men of good faith, in complex matters where they possess exactly the same elements of information, arrive at different conclusions on the probabilities of an event, and that in betting together, each believes…that it is he who is the thief and the other the imbecile.”

“I have two maxims that I believe, dear girl. One, if you can control yourself, you can control others. Two, if you can control information, you can control others.”

“Two did not become one, but rather two came together—each one strong, healthy, and resilient, making the whole steadfast and true. They didn’t lose themselves in each other, but found themselves in each other instead.”

“For in me there have always been two fools, among others, one asking nothing better than to stay where he is and the other imagining that life might be slightly less horrible a little further on.”

“A situation is always comic if it participates simultaneously in two series of events which are absolutely independent of each other, and if it can be interpreted in two quite different meanings.”

“But confining myself more to the particular, I say that a prince may be seen happy to-day and ruined to-morrow without having shown any change of disposition or character. This, I believe, arises firstly from causes that have already been discussed at length, namely, that the prince who relies entirely upon fortune is lost when it changes. I believe also that he will be successful who directs his actions according to the spirit of the times, and that he whose actions do not accord with the times will not be successful. Because men are seen, in affairs that lead to the end which every man has before him, namely, glory and riches, to get there by various methods; one with caution, another with haste; one by force, another by skill; one by patience, another by its opposite; and each one succeeds in reaching the goal by a different method. One can also see of two cautious men the one attain his end, the other fail; and similarly, two men by different observances are equally successful, the one being cautious, the other impetuous; all this arises from nothing else than whether or not they conform in their methods to the spirit of the times. This follows from what I have said, that two men working differently bring about the same effect, and of two working similarly, one attains his object and the other does not.”