Fancy sleeping on air. I wonder if anyone's done it before. I don't suppose they have. Oh, bother—-Scrubb probably has!

Don't you understand anything? Isn't it absolutely essential to keep a fierce Left and a fierce Right, both on their toes and each terrified of the other? That's how we get things done. Any opposition to the N.I.C.E. is represented as a Left racket in the Right papers and a Right racket in the Left papers. If it's properly done, you get each side outbidding the other in support of us-to refute the enemy slanders. Of course we're non-political. The real power always is.

Christ offers something for nothing: He even offers everything for nothing.

Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense.

No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.

Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.

For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men.