To denounce does not free the self from what it hates, any more than ignoring the past shuts off its influence.

It seems a long time since the morning mail could be called correspondence.

Boredom and fatigue are great historical forces.

To watch a football game is to be in a prolonged neurotic doubt as to what you're seeing. It's more like an emergency happening at a distance than a game. I don't wonder the spectators take to drink.

The reason teaching has to go on is that children are not born human; they are made so.

The book, like the bicycle, is a perfect form.

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.