Virtue has need of limits. - Montesquieu

THE first Greeks were all pirates. Minos, who enjoyed the empire of the sea, was only more successful, perhaps, than others in piracy; for his maritime dominion extended no farther than round his own isle. But when the Greeks became a great people, the Athenians obtained the real dominion of the sea; because this trading and victorious nation gave laws to the most potent monarch of that time; and humbled the maritime powers of Syria, of the isle of Cyprus, and Phœnicia.

La réputation et la vertu y sont regardées comme imaginaires, si elles ne sont accompagnées de la faveur du prince, avec laquelle elles naissent et meurent de même.

Rhedi: I am always afraid that they will eventually succeed in discovering some secret which will provide a quicker way of making men die, and exterminate whole countries and nations.

Usbek: No, if such a fateful invention came to be discovered, it would soon be banned by international law; by the unanimous consent of every country the discovery would be buried.