Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them. There is almost no kind of outrage-torture, imprisonment without trial, assassination, the bombing of civilians-which does not change its moral color when it is committed by 'our' side. The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.

A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.

I had been in London innumerable times, and yet till that day I had never noticed one of the worst things about London-the fact that it costs money even to sit down.

Truth becomes untruth if uttered by your enemy

You must be an intellectual. A normal person would never believe a thing like that.

I'm fat, but I'm thin inside. Has it ever struck you that there's a thin man inside every fat man, just as they say there's a statue inside every block of stone?

On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.