Top 35 Catherine the Great Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Power without a nation’s confidence is nothing.”

— Catherine the Great

2. “One does not always do the best there is. One does the best one can.”

— Catherine the Great

3. “A great wind is blowing, and that gives you either imagination or a headache.”

— Catherine the Great

4. “I beg you take courage; the brave soul can mend even disaster.”

— Catherine the Great

5. “In my position you have to read when you want to write and to talk when you would like to read.”

— Catherine the Great

6. “Praise is the only gift for which people are really grateful. Marguerite, Countess of Blessington I praise loudly; I blame softly.”

— Catherine the Great

7. “I have no way to defend my borders but to extend them.”

— Catherine the Great

8. “Men make love more intensely at 20, but make love better, however, at 30.”

— Catherine the Great

9. “The most sure, but at the same time the most difficult expedient to mend the morals of the people, is a perfect system of education.”

— Catherine the Great

10. “I cannot live one day without love.”

— Catherine the Great

11. “I do not love strife, because I have always found that in the end each remains of the same opinion.”

— Catherine the Great

12. “I like to praise and reward loudly, to blame quietly.”

— Catherine the Great

13. “You should know our mania for building is stronger than ever. It is a diabolical thing. It consumes money and the more you build, the more you want to build. It’s a sickness like being addicted to alcohol.”

— Catherine the Great

14. “Assuredly men of merit are never lacking at any time, for those are the men who manage affairs, and it is affairs that produce the men. I have never searched, and I have always found under my hand the men who have served me, and for the most part I have been well served.”

— Catherine the Great

15. “I may be kindly, I am ordinarily gentle, but in my line of business I am obliged to will terribly what I will at all.”

— Catherine the Great

16. “The use of torture is contrary to sound judgment and common sense. Humanity itself cries out against it, and demands it to be utterly abolished.”

— Catherine the Great

17. “Happiness and unhappiness are in the heart and spirit of each one of us: If you feel unhappy, then place yourself above that and act so that your happiness does not get to be dependent on anything.”

— Catherine the Great

18. “The more a man knows, the more he forgives.”

— Catherine the Great

19. “For to tempt and to be tempted are things very nearly allied – whenever feeling has anything to do in the matter, no sooner is it excited than we have already gone vastly farther than we are aware of.”

— Catherine the Great

20. “Don’t worry about things you cannot alter.”

— Catherine the Great

21. “I like to praise and reward in a loud voice and to scold in a whisper.”

— Catherine the Great

22. “You philosophers are lucky men. You write on paper and paper is patient. Unfortunate Empress that I am, I write on the susceptible skins of living beings.”

— Catherine the Great

23. “Nothing is more difficult, in my opinion, than to avoid something that fundamentally attracts you.”

— Catherine the Great

24. “I sincerely want peace, not because I lack resources for war, but because I hate bloodshed.”

— Catherine the Great

25. “I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.”

— Catherine the Great

26. “In politics a capable ruler must be guided by circumstances, conjectures and conjunctions.”

— Catherine the Great

27. “I am one of the people who love the why of things.”

— Catherine the Great

28. “What right can give anyone authority to inflict torture upon a citizen when it is still unknown whether he is innocent or guilty?”

— Catherine the Great

29. “If Russians knew how to read, they would write me off.”

— Catherine the Great

30. “If I may venture to be frank I would say about myself that I was every inch a gentleman...”

— Catherine the Great

31. “Tell a thousand people to draft a letter, let them debate every phrase, and see how long it takes and what you get.”

— Catherine the Great

32. “All punishments by which the human body might be maimed are barbarbarism.”

— Catherine the Great

33. “God, grant us our desires, and grant them quickly.”

— Catherine the Great

34. “I will live to make myself not feared.”

— Catherine the Great

35. “You were in a mood to quarrel. Please inform me once the inclination passes.”

— Catherine the Great

36. “Your wits make others witty.”

— Catherine the Great

37. “Very early it was noticed that I had a good memory; therefore I was insistently tormented with learning everything by heart.”

— Catherine the Great

38. “One cannot always know what children are thinking. Children are hard to understand, especially when careful training has a custom them to obedience and experience has made them cautious in conversation with their teachers.”

— Catherine the Great