By the time I was 9, I had the conviction that everybody in the world was an artist except plumbers or people who delivered groceries.

The one thing that unifies men in a given age is not their individual philosophies but the dominant problem that these philosophies are designed to solve.

The reason why research is like sculpting from memory is that in neither is there a concrete visible subject to copy directly. The subject - as sculptors themselves are fond of saying - is hidden in the block of material.

It is only in the shadows, when some fresh wave, truly original, truly creative, breaks upon the shore, that there will be a rediscovery of the West.

The nation in arms is virtually a communist state: the people must be paid wages and fed and protected and regimented behind the lines as much as on the front. Minds must be kept loyal and at the right pitch of hate, so that successive drafts of fighters are accepted without murmurings. Letters and newspapers must be censored while the propaganda mill grinds on. As for decisions of strategy and overall command, they must please many masters: dissenters in the cabinet, the heads of the allied states and public opinion. Hence failures must be disguised or concealed.

Only a great mind that is overthrown yields tragedy

Political correctness does not legislate tolerance; it only organizes hatred.