A bureaucracy is sure to think that its duty is to augment official power, official business, or official members, rather than to leave free the energies of mankind; it overdoes the quantity of government, as well as impairs its quality. The truth is, that a skilled bureaucracy is, though it boasts of an appearance of science, quite inconsistent with the true principles of the art of business.

What impresses men is not mind, but the result of mind.

The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards

The cure for admiring the House of Lords is to go and look at it.

A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.

A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.

If you have to prove you are worthy of credit, your credit is already gone.