The great advantage of the sort of education I had was precisely that it made practically no mark upon those subjected to it.

One of the peculiar sins of the twentieth century which we've developed to a very high level is the sin of credulity. It has been said that when human beings stop believing in God they believe in nothing. The truth is much worse: they believe in anything.

I have to say that I think that Anthony Eden was probably the most disastrous Prime Minister in our history, and I am not forgetting Lord North and a few people like that.

I think that President [Dwight] Eisenhower was... did the most marvelous job in the war, not really a military job: a public relations job, and it was essential that there should be a public relations job done in the post that he had.

A ready means of being cherished by the English is to adopt the simple expedient of living a long time. I have little doubt that if, say, Oscar Wilde had lived into his nineties, instead of dying in his forties, he would have been considered a benign, distinguished figure suitable to preside at a school prize-giving or to instruct and exhort scout masters at their jamborees. He might even have been knighted.

I think Winston Churchill is an appallingly bad politician, and always has been, that he hung onto power long after he should have done, and that his post-war administration was a disaster.

Humor is practically the only thing about which the English are utterly serious.