Careful Words

policy (n.)

  Honesty is the best policy.

Miguel De Cervantes (1547-1616): Don Quixote. Part ii. Chap. xxxiii.

  Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.

Edmund Burke (1729-1797): Reflections on the Revolution in France. Vol. iii. p. 334.

Turn him to any cause of policy,

The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,

Familiar as his garter: that when he speaks,

The air, a chartered libertine, is still.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry V. Act i. Sc. 1.