Communism worked honestly by officials devoid of human frailties and devoted to nothing but the good of its slaves, would have certain manifest material advantages as compared with a proletarian wage-system where millions live in semi-starvation, and many millions more in permanent dread thereof. But even if it were administered thus Communism would only produce its benefits through imposing slavery.

Even if the wealth and power be well distributed throughout a community, its members will not be happy unless they are inwardly so, and obviously where the distribution is bad, where the few have a vast superfluity and the many are consumed by anxiety or want, or where a few controllers can exercise their will over the many, society has failed, even though its total wealth and power be increased.

I shoot the Hippopotamus with bullets made of platinum, because if I use the leaden one his hide is sure to flatten em.

Just as there is nothing between the admirable omelet and the intolerable, so with autobiography.

There are few greater temptations on earth than to stay permanently at Oxford in meditation, and to read all the books in the Bodlean.

For one thing, I was no longer alone; a man is never alone with the wind-and the boat made three.

When the mass of men are dispossessed - own nothing - they become wholly dependent upon the owners; and when those owners are in active competition to lower the cost of production the mass of men whom they exploit not only lack the power to order their own lives, but suffer from want and insecurity as well.