In retrospect, all these exercises in self-gratification seem pure fantasy, what Pascal called, licking the earth.

Tranquilizers to overcome angst, pep pills to wake us up, life pills to ensure blissful sterility. I will lift up my ears unto the pills whence cometh my help.

When Dwight Eisenhower became president, I personally was delighted. I thought that that was a very good thing.

I don't think that it would make the slightest difference to life and to the aspects of life that interest me if we could go to the moon tomorrow, because I think what really makes life interesting is the big question "Why?"

It's a sad thing about politics that most people get power too late, in that they differ from ladies of easy virtue who get their pleasures too early.

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.

Like a prisoner awaiting his release, like a schoolboy when the end of term is near, like a migrant bird ready to fly south ... I long to be gone.