People were strange like that. Steal five dollars and you were a petty thief. Steal thousands of dollars and you were either a government or a hero.
You see, I believe in freedom, Mr Lipwig. Not many people do, although they will of course protest otherwise. And no practical definition of freedom would be complete withouth the freedom to take the consequences. Indeed, it is the freedom upon wich all the others are based.
Before you could sell glass as diamonds you had to make people really want to see diamonds.
Craftsmen. D'you know whta that means? It means men with some pride, who get fed up and leave when they're told to do skimpy work in a rush, no matter what you pay them. So I'm employing people as 'craftsmen' now who're barely fit to sweep out a workshop. But you don't care, because if they don't polish a chair with their arse all day you think a man who's done a seven-year apprenticeship is the same as some twerp who can't be trusted to hold a hammer by the right end.
Always remember that the crowd which applauds your coronation is the same crowd that will applaud your beheading. People like a show.
Never promise to do the possible. Anyone could do the possible. You should promise to do the impossible, because sometimesthe impossible was possible, if you could find the right way, and at least you could often extend the limits of the possible. And if you failed, well, it had been imposssible.
Sometimes the truth is arrived at by adding all the little lies together and deducting them from the totality of what is known.