“But what is this will to power? It would be a mistake to think of it as a drive to secure some stable state of power, in which we would then squat contentedly. In this universe of flux and endless becoming there is nothing static. To be in a position of power is continuously to exercise power. Power itself is the discharge of power. Power, then, is the will to power in act, willing itself toward further power, and so on endlessly. The will to power is a will to will. It wills itself endlessly in a void from which the very notion of ‘the true world’ – of which earlier philosophers dreamed – is denied it, and which it in turn defiantly denies.”

William Barrett The Illusion of Technique

“The real test of a man is not how well he plays the role he has invented for himself, but how well he plays the role that destiny assigned to him.”

Vaclav Havel

“A very wise man once said to me that in this life you could often get success, if you didn’t want victory.”

The character Sandy Arbuthnot in John Buchan’s novel The Three Hostages.

“I care not much for a man’s religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.”

Abraham Lincoln

“The only way they would help an old lady across the street is by setting fire to her skirt.” An unnamed diplomat on a corrupt and arrogant Third World military organization, quoted in The Economist April 6 1991

“The collapse of German philosophy always occurs at the beginning rather than at the end of an argument.”

G.K. Chesterton (in “The Refusal of Reciprocity” in The Appetite of Tyranny according to Gilbert Magazine Vol. 8 #2 p. 31)

“For it is history alone which, without involving us in actual danger, will mature our judgement and prepare us to take right views, whatever may be the crisis or the posture of affairs.”

Polybius (quoted in Hugh Thomas An Unfinished History of the World)

“If he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, Sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.”

Samuel Johnson