Great Throughts Treasury

"Opening amenities are often opening inanities."

"Our inheritance of well-founded, slowly conceived codes of honor, morals and manners, the passionate convictions which so many hundreds of millions share together of the principles of freedom and justice, are far more precious to us than anything which scientific discoveries could bestow."

"Painting is a companion with whom one may walk a great part of life's journey."

"Our loyal, brave people? should know the truth... they should know that we have sustained a defeat without a war? and that the terrible words have for the time being been pronounced against the Western democracies; ?Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.? And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proferred to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigor, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time."

"People imagine that Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin arrived in Yalta with a blank sheet of paper to decide the fate of Europe. Nothing could be further from the truth,"

"Painting a picture is like trying to fight a battle."

"Painting is the same kind of problem as unfolding a long, sustained interlocked argument... It is a proposition commanded by a single unity of conception."

"People occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."

"People say we ought not to allow ourselves to be drawn into a theoretical antagonism between Nazidom and democracy; but the antagonism is here now. It is this very conflict of spiritual and moral ideas which gives the free countries a great part of their strength. You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. On all sides they are guarded by masses of armed men, cannons, airplanes, fortifications, and the like ? they boast and vaunt themselves before the world, yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts; words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home ? all the more powerful because forbidden ? terrify them. A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic. They make frantic efforts to bar our thoughts and words; they are afraid of the workings of the human mind. Cannons, airplanes, they can manufacture in large quantities; but how are they to quell the natural promptings of human nature, which after all these centuries of trial and progress has inherited a whole armory of potent and indestructible knowledge?"

"Play the game for more than you can afford to lose... only then will you learn the game."

"Perhaps we have been guilty of some terminological inexactitudes."

"Personally I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught."

"People stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened."

"Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong."

"Please be good enough to put your conclusions and recommendations on one sheet of paper in the very beginning of your report, so I can even consider reading it."

"Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times."

"Politics are very much like war. We may even have to use poison gas at times."

"Playing golf is like chasing a quinine pill around a cow pasture."

"Politicians have the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterward to explain why it didn't happen."

"Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times."

"Projects undreamed of by past generations will absorb our immediate descendants, comforts, activities, amenities, pleasures will crowd upon them, but their hearts will ache and their lives will be barren, if they have not a vision above material things."

"Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business."

"Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen."

"Ramsey MacDonald has the gift of compressing the largest amount of words into the smallest amount of thoughts."

"Praise up the humanities, my boy. That will make them think that you are broad-minded."

"Really I feel less keen about the Army every day. I think the Church would suit me better."

"Reflecting on the outcome of World War I, and an ominous future."

"Say what you have to say and the first time you come to a sentence with a grammatical ending-sit down."

"Schools have not necessarily much to do with education... they are mainly institutions of control, where basic habits must be inculcated in the young. Education is quite different and has little place in school."

"Science burrows its insulted head in the filth of slaughterous inventions."

"Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. [about Russia]"

"Responsibility is the price of greatness."

"Safari, so goody."

"Saving is a very fine thing. Especially when your parents have done it for you."

"Saving is a fine thing. Especially when your parents have done it for you."

"Said during lunch with Arab leader Ibn Saud, when he heard the king's religion forbade smoking and alcohol"

"Scientists should be on tap, but not on top."

"She shone for me like the Evening Star. I loved her dearly ? but at a distance."

"Should Britain fail, then the entire world would sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister ... by the lights of perverted science."

"Show me a young Conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old Liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains."

"Side by side? the British and French peoples have advanced to rescue ? mankind from the foulest and most soul-destroying tyranny which has ever darkened and stained the pages of history. Behind them ? gather a group of shattered States and bludgeoned races: the Czechs, the Poles, the Norwegians, the Danes, the Dutch, the Belgians -- upon all of whom the long night of barbarism will descend, unbroken even by a star of hope, unless we conquer, as conquer we must; as conquer we shall."

"Sir Stafford Cripps has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."

"Science unfolded her treasures and her secrets to the desperate demands of men, and placed in their hands agencies and apparatus almost decisive in their character."

"Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all."

"So now the Admiralty wireless whispers through the ether to the tall masts of ships, and captains pace their decks absorbed in thought. It is nothing. It is less than nothing. It is too foolish, too fantastic to be thought of in the twentieth century. Or is it fire and murder leaping out of the darkness at our throats, torpedoes ripping the bellies of half-awakened ships, a sunrise on a vanished naval supremacy, and an island well-guarded hitherto, at last defenseless? No, it is nothing. No one would do such things. Civilization has climbed above such perils. The interdependence of nations in trade and traffic, the sense of public law, the Hague Convention, Liberal principles, the Labor Party, high finance, Christian charity, common sense have rendered such nightmares impossible. Are you quite sure? It would be a pity to be wrong. Such a mistake could only be made once?once for all."

"So they [the Government] go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent."

"Socialism is like a dream. Sooner or later you wake up to reality."

"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery."

"Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy."

"Socialism needs to pull down wealth; liberalism seeks to raise up poverty. Socialism would destroy private interests, Liberalism would preserve [them]... by reconciling them with public right. Socialism would kill enterprise; Liberalism would rescue enterprise from the trammels of privilege and preference. Socialism assails the preeminence of the individual; Liberalism seeks... to build up a minimum standard for the mass. Socialism exalts the rule; Liberalism exalts the man. Socialism attacks capitalism; Liberalism attacks monopoly."