If Max [Aitken] gets to Heaven he won't last long. He will be chucked out for trying to pull off a merger between Heaven and Hell ... after having secured a controlling interest in key subsidiary companies in both places, of course.

The State's your mother, your father, the totality of your interests. No discipline can be too severe for the man that denies thatby word or deed.

The history of mankind for the last four centuries is rather like that of an imprisoned sleeper, stirring clumsily and uneasily while the prison that restrains and shelters him catches fire, not waking but incorporating the crackling and warmth of the fire with ancient and incongruous dreams, than like that of a man consciously awake to danger and opportunity.

The Athenian democracy suffered much from that narrowness of patriotism which is the ruin of all nations.

He who does not contemplate the future is destined to be overwhelmed by it.

So utterly at variance is Destiny with all the little plans of men.

This isn't a war," said the artilleryman. "It never was a war, any more than there's war between man and ants.