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

The true strength of rulers and empires lies not in armies or emotions, but in the belief of men that they are inflexibly open and truthful and legal. As soon as a government departs from that standard it ceases to be anything more than 'the gang in possession,' and its days are numbered.

I must confess that my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocating its crew and floundering at sea.

There is nothing in machinery, there is nothing in embankments and railways and iron bridges and engineering devices to oblige them to be ugly. Ugliness is the measure of imperfection.

Human history is, in essence, a history of ideas.

Very much indeed of what we call moral education is such an artificial modification and perversion of instinct; pugnacity is trained into courageous self-sacrifice, and suppressed sexuality into religious emotion.

What good is religion if it collapses under calamity?