Never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter.
The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.
The reason for having diplomatic relations is not to confer a compliment, but to secure a convenience. [On diplomatic recognition of the People's Republic of China]
An old battleax of a woman said to Winston Churchill, "If you were my husband I would put poison in your tea." Churchill's response, "Ma'am if you were my wife I would drink it.
From the days of Spartacus, Weishophf, Karl Marx, Trotski, Belacoon, Rosa Luxenburg, and Ema Goldman, this world conspiracy has been steadily growing. This conspiracy played a definite recognizable role in the tragedy of the French revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the 19th Century. And now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their head and have become the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.
We see nothing but good and hope in a richer, freer, more contented European commonalty. But we have our own dreams and our own task. We are with Europe, but not of it. We are linked, but not comprised. We are interested and associated, but not absorbed.
In Great Britain, governments often change their policies without changing their men. In France, they usually change their men without changing their policy.
Schools have not necessarily much to do with education...they are mainly institutions of control where certain basic habits must be inculcated in the young. Education is quite different and has little place in school.