None of us feels the true love of God till we realize how wicked we are. But you can't teach people that - they have to learn by experience.

I entirely agree that a historian ought to be precise in detail; but unless you take all the characters and circumstances into account, you are reckoning without the facts. The proportions and relations of things are just as much facts as the things themselves.

The young were always theoretical; only the middle-aged could realize the deadliness of principles.

A society in which consumption has to be artificially stimulated in order to keep production going is a society founded on trash and waste, for such a society is a house built upon sand.

The ideal of a perfectly functioning democracy is one person, one vote; the ideal of a perfectly functioning market is one dollar, one vote.It's a hoary superstition that democratically elected governments invariably function as instruments of the collective will.A society in which consumption has to be artificially stimulated in order to keep production going is a society founded on trash and waste.

Lawyers enjoy a little mystery, you know. Why, if everybody came forward and told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth straight out, we should all retire to the workhouse.

Detective stories keep alive a view of the world which ought to be true. Of course people read them for fun ... But underneath they feed a hunger for justice ... you offer to divert them, and you show them by stealth the orderly world in which we should all try to be living.