The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.

One of the effects of a safe and civilized life is an immense oversensitiveness which makes all the primary emotions somewhat disgusting. Generosity is as painful as meanness, gratitude as hateful as in gratitude.

Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.