Usually, if we hate, it is the shadow of the person that we hate, rather than the substance. We may hate a person because he reminds us of someone we feared and disliked when younger; or because we see in him some gross caricature of what we find repugnant in ourself; or because he symbolizes an attitude that seems to threaten us.

Once we assuage our conscience by calling something a "necessary evil", it begins to look more and more necessary and less and less evil.

A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, his is also one who is permanently disappointed in the future.

Isolation always perverts; when a man lives only among his own sort, he soon begins to believe that his sort are the best sort. This attitude breeds both the arrogance of the conservative and the bitterness of the radical.

History repeats itself, but in such cunning disguise that we never detect the resemblance until the damage is done.

Never take the advice of someone who has not had your kind of trouble.

There's no point in burying a hatchet if you're going to put up a marker on the site.