How I hated this school, and what a life of anxiety I lived there for more than two years.

The Navy can lose us the war, but only the Air Force can win it. Therefore our supreme effort must be to gain overwhelming mastery in the Air. The Fighters are our salvation . . . but the Bombers alone provide the means of victory. . . . In no other way at present visible can we hope to overcome the immense military power of Germany.

Do not turn the superior eye of critical passivity upon these efforts .... We must not be ambitious. We cannot aspire to masterpieces. We may content ourselves with a joy ride in a paint-box.

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.

The rhinoceros stood ... about five hundred yards away ... not a twentieth-century animal at all, but an odd, grim straggler from the Stone Age.

Headmasters have powers at their disposal with which Prime ministers have never yet been invested.

Democracy is an awful way to run a country, but it's the best system we have.