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.

Night, the mother of fear and mystery, was coming upon me.

Arson, after all, is an artificial crime...A large number of houses deserve to be burnt.

Very simple was my explanation, and plausible enough---as most wrong theories are!

We must end war before war ends us.

I write as straight as I can, just as I walk as straight as I can, because that is the best way to get there.

As the journalists of the time phased it, this was the epoch of the Leap into the Air. The new atomic aeroplane became indeed a mania; everyone of means was frantic to possess a thing so controllable, so secure and so free from the dust and danger of the road, and in France in the year 1943 thirty thousand of these new aeroplanes were manufactured and licensed, and soared humming softly into the sky.