Wars may be fought by decent men, but they're not won by them.

The world is full of people who have lost faith: politicians who have lost faith in politics, social workers who have lost faith in social work, schoolteachers who have lost faith in teaching and, for all I know, policemen who have lost faith in policing and poets who have lost faith in poetry. It's a condition of faith that it gets lost from time to time, or at least mislaid.

Perhaps it's only when people are dead that we can safely show how much we cared about them. We know that it's too late then for them to do anything about it.

the unforgivable was usually the most easily forgiven.

We English are good at forgiving our enemies; it releases us from the obligation of liking our friends.

There comes a time when every scientist, even God, has to write off an experiment.

Ambition, if it were to be savored, let alone achieved, had to be rooted in possibility.