Quotes about Flattery

Proud men are the devil's pipes, and flatterers the musicians to blow these pipes.

When Fortune flatters, she does it to betray.

Whenever a man's friends begin to compliment him about looking young, he may be sure that they think he is growing old.

Powerful societies do not silence their poietai in order that they may go to war; they go to war as a way of silencing their poietai. Original thinkers can be suppressed through execution and exile, or they can be encouraged through subsidy and flattery to praise the society's heroes. Alexander and Napoleon took their poets and their scholars into battle with them, saving themselves the nuisance of repression and along the way drawing ever larger audiences to their triumph.

I would warn my brethren and sisters to never flatter persons because of their ability; for they cannot bear it. Self is easily exalted, and in consequence, persons lose their balance.