Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The reporting of news has to be understood as propaganda for commodities, and events by images.
The problem for us is less to discover the way it really is than to see the meaning of the way.
All revolutions are bloody. The October Revolution was bloodless, but it was only the beginning
The man who wins is the man who hangs on just five minutes longer after everyone else has quit.
History, in fact, is no more than a list of the crimes of humanity, human follies and accidents
In every deed of mischief he had a heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a hand to execute.
Experience has always shown, and reason also, that affairs which depend on many seldom succeed.
The movement of the progressive societies has hitherto been a movement from Status to Contract.
The epoch of Customary Law, and of its custody by a privileged order, is a very remarkable one.
The most celebrated system of jurisprudence known to the world begins, as it ends, with a Code.
The ideal of progress, freedom of thought, and the decline of ecclesiastical power go together.
What is the first part of politics? Education. The second? Education. And the third? Education.
It is better that a guilty man should not be brought to trial than that he should be acquitted.
They are more than men at the outset of their battles; at the end they are less than the women.
The historian is, by definition, absolutely incapable of observing the facts which he examines.
You don't say that for a senator to be a great senator he has to vote against his constituency.
The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.
To ensure victory the troops must have confidence in themselves as well as in their commanders.
Men are more apt to be mistaken in their generalizations than in their particular observations.
Tourism requires that you see conventional things, and that you see them in a conventional way.
You have to be a soldier and a veteran, or a soldier who sacrificed your life for your country.
If a caterpillar doesn't know its future has wings, it hardly experiences itself as land-bound.
It is the rare fortune of these days that one may think what one likes and say what one thinks.
More faults are often committed while we are trying to oblige than while we are giving offense.
In all things there is a kind of law of cycles. [Lat., Rebus cunctis inest quidam velut orbis.]
Social democracy does not represent an ideal future; it does not even represent the ideal past.
As the past has ceased to throw its light upon the future, the mind of man wanders in obscurity.
I expect the worst both from reviewers and sales and then, with any luck, I may be proved wrong.
The first rule of democracy is to distrust all leaders who begin to believe their own publicity.
I don't think I have made as much of my life as I should have. I should have written more books.
Why not exploit, enslave, or exterminate a class that everybody is taught to regard as inferior?
Yet humanitarianism is not a purely Christian movement any more than it is a purely humanist one
The effect of the mass media is not to elicit belief but to maintain the apparatus of addiction.
Information, usually seen as the precondition of debate, is better understood as its by-product.
Maybe I will write a memoir, perhaps I'll do some essays, or maybe I will write a mystery story.
I don't care tuppence whether I'm forced into a leadership position or not. I'd much sooner not.
The best leaders collect information widely, listen to everybody, and then decide by themselves.
[Peace] cannot be honorable or secure, if the sovereign betrays a pusillanimous aversion to war.
Our toil is lessened, and our wealth is increased, by our dominion over the useful animals . . .
Beauty is an outward gift which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.
Versailles was a gulf into which the labor of France poured its earnings; and it was never full.
Social history might be defined negatively as the history of a people with the politics left out
The future is dark, the present burdensome. Only the past, dead and buried, bears contemplation.
American art, like the American language and American education, was as far as possible sexless.
Mens fortunes are on a wheel, which in its turning suffers not the same man to prosper for ever.
Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments give lustre, and many more people see than weigh.
In a two-party system, if both parties ignore public opinion, there is no place voters can turn.
Hitler was highly secretive - not least about his personal life, his background, and his family.
Neither in the life of the individual nor in that of mankind is it desirable to know the future.
I have always been - I think any student of history almost inevitably is - a cheerful pessimist.