Quote collection
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"Before the war it had seemed incredible that such terrors and slaughters, even if they began, could last more than a few months. After the first two years it was difficult to believe that they would ever end."
"Nothing is more dangerous in wartime than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup Poll, always feeling one's pulse and taking one's temperature."
"How little can we foresee the consequences either of wise or unwise action, of virtue or of malice. Without this measureless and perpetual uncertainty, the drama of human life would be destroyed."
"In the past we have had a light which flickered, in the present we have a light which flames, and in the future there will be a light which shines over all the land and sea."
"A pessimist sees problems in opportunities whereas an optimist sees opportunities in problems."
"The definition of courage is going from defeat to defeat with enthusiasm."
"When I look round to see how we can win the war, I see that there is only one sure path . . . and that is absolutely devastating, exterminating attack by very heavy bombers from this country upon the Nazi homeland."
"May it not also be that the cause of civilization itself will be defended by the skill and devotion of a few thousand airmen? There never has been, I suppose, in all the world, in all the history of war, such an opportunity for youth. The Knights of the Round Table, the Crusaders, all fall back into the past."
"They had bombed London, whether on purpose or not, and the British people and London especially should know that we could hit back. It would be good for the morale of us all."
"I have lived seventy-eight years without hearing of bloody places like Cambodia."
"A world united is better than a world divided, but a world divided is better than a world destroyed."
"Unpunctuality is a vile habit."
"Certainly the prolonged education indispensable to the progress of society is not natural to mankind."
"I devoured Gibbon. I rode triumphantly through it from end to end and enjoyed it all."
"How I hated this school, and what a life of anxiety I lived there for more than two years."
"In all the twelve years I was at school no one ever succeeded in making me write a Latin verse or learn any Greek except the alphabet."
"It was at "Little Lodge" I was first menaced with Education. The approach of a sinister figure described as 'the Governess' was announced."
"The facilities for advanced education must be evened out and multiplied. No one who can take advantage of a higher education should be denied this chance. You cannot conduct a modern community except with an adequate supply of persons upon whose education, whether humane, technical, or scientific, much time and money have been spent."
"The most formidable people in the world, and now the most dangerous, people who... lay down the doctrine that every frontier must be the starting out point for invasion."
"My hope is that the generous instincts of unity will not depart from us...[so that we] become the prey of the little folk who exist in every country and who frolic alongside the Juggernaut car of war to see what fun or notoriety they can extract from the proceedings."