Chief among the forces affecting political folly is lust for power, named by Tacitus as "the most flagrant of all the passions." Because it can only be satisfied by power over others, government is its favorite field of exercise. Business offers a kind of power, but only to the very successful at the top, and without the dominion and titles and red carpets and motorcycle escorts of public office.

in the midst of war and crisis nothing is as clear or as certain as it appears in hindsight

For me, the card catalog has been a companion all my working life. To leave it is like leaving the house one was brought up in.

Reasonable orders are easy enough to obey; it is capricious, bureaucratic or plain idiotic demands that form the habit of discipline.

The fact of being reported increases the apparent extent of a deplorable development by a factor of ten.

When every autumn people said it could not last through the winter, and when every spring there was still no end in sight, only the hope that out of it all some good would accrue to mankind kept men and nations fighting. When at last it was over, the war had many diverse results and one dominant one transcending all others: disillusion.

Fateful moments tend to evoke grandeur of speech, especially in French.