The man who is denied the opportunity of taking decisions of importance begins to regard as important the decisions he is allowed to take.

A committee is organic rather than mechanical in its nature: it is not a structure but a plant. It takes root and grows, it flowers, wilts, and dies, scattering the seed from which other committees will bloom in their turn.

Parkinson's Fourth Law: The number of people in any working group tends to increase regardless of the amount of work to be done.

Make the people sovereign and the poor will use the machinery of government to dispossess the rich.

People of great ability do not emerge, as a rule, from the happiest background. So far as my own observation goes, I would conclude that ability, although hereditary, is improved by an early measure of adversity and improved again by a later measure of success.

Expansion means complexity and complexity decay.

The basic quality for the diplomat is not intelligence but loyalty.