Only by avoiding the beginning of things can we escape their end.

Were I to deduce any system from my feelings on leaving Eton, it might be called The Theory of Permanent Adolescence. It is the theory that the experiences undergone by boys at the great public schools, their glories and disappointments, are so intense as to dominate their lives and to arrest their development. From these it results that the greater part of the ruling class remains adolescent, school-minded, self-conscious, cowardly, sentimental, and in the last analysis homosexual.

Civilization is an active deposit which is formed by the combustion of the Present with the Past. Neither in countries without a Present nor in those without a Past is it to be discovered.

Everyone has the right to express an opinion. No one has the right to be listened to.

The headmistress was an able instructress in French and history and we learned with her as fast as fear could teach us.

The river of truth is always splitting up into arms that reunite. Islanded between them, the inhabitants argue for a lifetime as to which is the mainstream.

We create the world in which we live; if that world becomes unfit for human life, it is because we tire of our responsibility.