The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-Boat peril...It did not take the form of flaring battles and glittering achievements, it manifested itself through statistics, diagrams, and curves unknown to the nation, incomprehensible to the public.

Everybody has always underrated the Russians. They keep their own secrets alike from foe and friends.

Unpunctuality is a vile habit.

I now began for the first time to envy those young cubs at the university who had fine scholars to tell them what was what; professors who had devoted their lives to mastering and focusing ideas in every branch of learning; who were eager to distribute the treasures they had gathered before they were overtaken by the night. But now I pity undergraduates, when I see what frivolous lives many of them lead in the midst of precious fleeting opportunity. After all, a man's Life must be nailed to a cross either of Thought or Action. Without work there is no play.

[My ideal of a good dinner] is to discuss good food, and, after this good food has been discussed, to discuss a good topic - with myself the chief conversationalist.

You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves.

I cannot help reflecting that if my father had been American and my mother British instead of the other way around, I might have gotten here on my own.