Man can be stimulated by hope or driven by fear, but the hope and the fear must be vivid and immediate if they are to be effective without producing weariness.

Perhaps the best hope for the future of mankind is that ways will be found of increasing the scope and intensity of sympathy.

Power is sweet; it is a drug, the desire for which increases with a habit.

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.

We must be sceptical even of our scepticism.

In a Balkan country, not so many years ago, a party which had been beaten by a narrow margin in a general election retrieved its fortunes by shooting a sufficient number of the representatives of the other side to give it a majority. . . . Cromwell and Robespierre . . . acted likewise.

To be able to concentrate for a considerable time is essential to difficult achievement.