In a dying civilization, political prestige is the reward not of the shrewdest diagnostician, but of the man with the best bedside manner.

A person who searched rooms, brandished pistols, dangled promises of half a million franc fees for nameless services and then wrote instructions to Polish spies might reasonably be regarded with suspicion. But suspicion of what?

Never tell a lie when you can bullshit your way through it

For the skeptic there remains only one consolation: if there should be such a thing as superhuman law it is administered with subhuman inefficiency.

International business may conduct its operations with scraps of paper, but the ink it uses is human blood.

In a dying civilization, political prestige is the reward not of the shrewdest diagnostician, but of the man with the best bedside manner.

Reality is always so obstructive.