Laws just or unjust may govern men's actions. Tyrannies may restrain or regulate their words. The machinery of propaganda may pack their minds with falsehood and deny them truth for many generations of time. But the soul of man thus held in trance or frozen in a long night can be awakened by a spark coming from God knows where and in a moment the whole structure of lies and oppression is on trial for its life.
More than 80 per cent of the British casualties of the Great War were English. More than 80 per cent of the taxation is paid by the English taxpayers. We are entitled to mention these facts, and to draw authority and courage from them.
I was happy as a child with my toys in my nursery. I been happier every year since I became a man. But this interlude of school makes a somber grey patch upon the chart of my journey. It was a unending spell of worries that did not then seem petty, and of toil uncheered by fruition; a time of discomfort, restriction and purposeless monotony.
Vast and fearsome as the human scene has become, personal contact of the right people, in the right places, at the right time, may yet have a potent and valuable part to play in the cause of peace which is in our hearts.
The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong.
Perfecting and selling your writing is a lifelong task. If you are a persistent writer, you can expect your abilities to improve with time. Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.
It may be that ... when the advance of destructive weapons enables everyone to kill everybody else nobody will want to kill anyone at all. [Referring to the hydrogen bomb.]
One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once 'The Unnecessary War'.
I remember when I was a child, being taken to the celebrated Barnum's Circus, which contained an exhibition of freaks and monstrosities, but the exhibit on the program which I most desired to see was the one described as ‘The Boneless Wonder’. My parents judged that the spectacle would be too demoralizing and revolting for my youthful eye and I have waited fifty years, to see The Boneless Wonder sitting on the Treasury Bench.
If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle them, and, as it were, fondle them. Let them fall open where they will. Make a voyage of discovery, taking soundings of uncharted seas.