They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening

Despotic governments can stand 'moral force' till the cows come home; what they fear is physical force.

The fact is that certain themes cannot be celebrated in words, and tyranny is one of them. No one ever wrote a good book in praise of the Inquisition.

You preferred to be a lunatic, a minority of one.

The whole experience of being hit by a bullet is very interesting and I think worth describing in detail.

The secret of a successful restaurant is sharp knives.

The energy that actually shapes the world springs from emotions - racial pride, leader-worship, religious belief, love of war - which liberal intellectuals mechanically write off as anachronisms, and which they have usually destroyed so completely in themselves as to have lost all power of action.