Men have been barbarians much longer than they have been civilized. They are only precariously civilized, and within us there is the propensity, persistent as the force of gravity, to revert under stress and strain, under neglect or temptation, to our first natures.

Social movements are at once the symptoms and the instruments of progress. Ignore them and statesmanship is irrelevant; fail to use them and it is weak.

Many a time I have wanted to stop talking and find out what I really believed.

The man who will follow precedent, but never create one, is merely an obvious example of the routineer. You find him desperately numerous in the civil service, in the official bureaus. To him government is something given as unconditionally, as absolutely as ocean or hill. He goes on winding the tape that he finds. His imagination has rarely extricated itself from under the administrative machine to gain any sense of what a human, temporary contraption the whole affair is. What he thinks is the heavens above him is nothing but the roof.

There is but one bond of peace that is both permanent and enriching: The increasing knowledge of the world in which experiment occurs.

A really good diplomat does not go in for victories, even when he wins them.

Lovers who have nothing to do but love each other are not really to be envied; love and nothing else very soon is nothing else.