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.

More than a code of manners in war and love, Chivalry was a moral system, governing the whole of noble life.

If I had taken a doctoral degree, it would have stifled any writing capacity.

For belligerent purposes, the 14th century, like the 20th, commanded a technology more sophisticated than the mental and moral capacity that guided its use.

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

I ask myself, have nations ever declined from a loss of moral sense rather than from physical reasons or the pressure of barbarians? I think that they have.

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