Snobbishness, like hypocrisy, is a check upon behaviour whose value from a social point of view has been underrated.

Take away freedom of speech, and the creative faculties dry up.

If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love.

What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?

In a town like London there are always plenty of not quite certifiable lunatics walking the streets, and they tend to gravitate towards bookshops, because a bookshop is one of the few places where you can hang about for a long time without spending any money.

That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.

Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.