You and I, Ella, we are the failures. We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept... truths that the great men have always known. They have known for thousands of years that to lock a sick person into solitary confinement makes him worse. They have known for thousands of years that a poor man who is frightened of his landlord and of the police is a slave. They have known it. We know it. But do the great enlightened mass of the British people know it? No. It is our task, Ella, yours and mine, to tell them. Because the great men are too great to be bothered. They are already discovering how to colonise Venus and to irrigate the moon. That is what is important for our time. You and I are the boulder-pushers. All our lives, you and I, we'll put all our energies, all our talents into pushing a great boulder up a mountain. The boulder is the truth that the great men know by instinct, and the mountain is the stupidity of mankind.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have met charming people, lots who would be charming if they hadn't got a complex about the British and everyone has pleasant an...d cheerful manners and I like most of the American voices. On the other hand I don't believe they have any God and their hats are frightful. On balance I prefer the Arabs.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But among all our Methods of moving Pity or Terror, there is none so absurd and barbarous, and what more exposes us to the Contemp...t and Ridicule of our Neighbours, than that dreadful butchering of one another, which is so very frequent upon the English Stage. To delight in seeing Men stabbed, poisoned, racked, or impaled, is certainly the Sign of a cruel Temper: And as this is often practised before the British Audience, several French Criticks, who think these are grateful Spectacles to us, take Occasion from them to represent us a People that delight in Blood.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I think the people over here are coming to realize what would happen if Germany and Italy won a European war. We would be out of t...he picture entirely.... If I were a German conqueror what would I do? Obviously I would have the British navy out of the way and the French army out of the way.... The first thing I would do is look around and say, "What outside territories do I want to take for myself?"... We are not quite ready to take on the United States but we can do it by indirection very nicely. We are going to dominate South America ... without violating the Monroe Doctrine. [FDR set forth a scenario of economic domination of Latin America by giving Argentina a choice of agreeing to German domination of its army by economic blackmail by virtue of the fact that Germany controlled all the agricultural markets in Europe on which Argentina depended for livelihood and the same for Brazil.] It is a perfectly open and shut thing and, if you have the complete, physical power to do it, you win.... [F]rom Hitler's point of view, it is rational. And, if any of us were in his place, with his methods, we would do it. I made myself a hump-back, dyed my skin in several places with great spots of yellow; so that, when I look'd in the glass, I was almost frighten'd at my own figure.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Among the virtues and vices that make up the British character, we have one vice, at least, that Americans ought to view with symp...athy. For they appear to be the only people who share it with us. I mean our worship of the antique. I do not refer to beauty or even historical association. I refer to age, to a quantity of years.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use th...eir best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I found myself back in the sepulchral city resenting the sight of people hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from... each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams. Their bearing, which was simply the bearing of commonplace individuals going about their business in the assurance of perfect safety, was offensive to me like the outrageous flauntings of folly in the face of a danger it is unable to comprehend.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When I consider how little of a rarity children are--that every street and blind alley swarms with them--that the poorest people c...ommonly have them in most abundance--that there are few marriages that are not blest with at least one of these bargains--how often they turn out ill, and defeat the fond hopes of their parents, taking to vicious courses, which end in poverty, disgrace, the gallows, etc.--I cannot for my life tell what cause for pride there can possibly be in having them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The basic thing nobody asks is why do people take drugs of any sort?... Why do we have these accessories to normal living to live?... I mean, is there something wrong with society that's making us so pressurized, that we cannot live without guarding ourselves against it?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »