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.

Nothing leads so straight to futility as literary ambitions without systematic knowledge.

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.

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

I believe that now and always the conscious selection of the best for reproduction will be impossible; that to propose it is to display a fundamental misunderstanding of what individuality implies. The way of nature has always been to slay the hindmost, and there is still no other way, unless we can prevent those who would become the hindmost being born. It is in the sterilization of failure, and not in the selection of successes for breeding, that the possibility of an improvement of the human stock lies.

We were not making war against Germany, we were being ordered about in the King's war with Germany.

Mankind which began in a cave and behind a windbreak will end in the disease-soaked ruins of a slum.