As the CIA and KGB, like God and Satan, fight Miltonic battles across five continents.

The urge to distribute wealth equally, and still more the belief that it can be brought about by political action, is the most dangerous of all popular emotions. It is the legitimation of envy, of all the deadly sins the one which a stable society based on consensus should fear the most. The monster state is a source of many evils; but it is, above all, an engine of envy.

Next to courage, willpower is the most important thing in politics.

His (Lenin's)humanitarianism was a very abstract passion. It embraced humanity in general but he seems to have had little love for, or even interest in, humanity in particular. He saw the people with whom he dealt, his comrades, not as individuals but as receptacles for his ideas. On that basis, and no other, they were judged. He judged man not by their moral qualities but by their views, or rather the degree to which they accepted his.

If I see a door ajar, I push on it to see how far it will open, and if it opens wide I go through it.

It takes less than a decade for today's luxury to become a universal necessity.

Conservation of energy. Never stand up when you can sit down, and never sit down when you can lie down.