Bad writers are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones.

On each landing, opposite the lift shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.

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.

The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.

The consequences of every act are included in the act itself.

We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.

In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion; the more intelligent, the less sane.