The basis of social relationships is reciprocity: if you cooperate with others, others will cooperate with you.

To know is not too demanding: it merely requires memory and time. But to understand is quite a different matter: it requires intellectual ability and training, a self conscious awareness of what one is doing, experience in techniques of analysis and synthesis, and above all, perspective.

There were people who said the Society of Cincinnati in the American revolution, of which George Washington was one of the shining lights, was a branch of the Illuminati.

Each central banksought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world.

On this basis, which was originally financial and goes back to George Peabody, there grew up in the twentieth century a power structure between London and New York which penetrated deeply into university life, the press, and the practice of foreign policy.

A civilization is complicated, in the first place, because it is dynamic; that is, it is constantly changing in the passage of time, until it has perished.

A state is not the same thing as a society, although the Greeks and Romans thought it was. A state is an organization of power on a territorial basis.