Learning is experience understood in tranquility.

The sobering thought is that individuals and societies are not, in the end, remembered for how they made their money, but for how they spent it.

Some of my unhappiest moments have been in organizations. Somehow it seems to be quite respectable to do things in organizations that you would never do in private life. I have had people insult me to my face in front of colleagues. I have had my feelings rammed down my throat on the pretext that it would do me good. I have been required to do things which I didn't agree with because the organization wished it... In my worst moments I have thought organizations were places designed to be run by sadists and staffed by masochists.

There is as far as I know, no example in history, of any state voluntarily ceding power from the centre to its constituent parts.

If there is one general law of communication it is that we never communicate as effectively as we think we do.

The morality of compromise' sounds contradictory. Compromise is usually a sign of weakness, or an admission of defeat. Strong men don't compromise, it is said, and principles should never be compromised. I shall argue that strong men, conversely, know when to compromise and that all principles can be compromised to serve a greater principle.

Passion is born of vague hopes.