“Words cannot express how deeply I regret the Annexation of Schleswig-Holstein.”
Florence King in National Review July 14 1997 (re politicians' fatuous habit of apologizing for historical deeds they had nothing to do with)
“No one is better placed to resist pressure than the person who knows he can’t give in to it.”
Conor Cruise O’Brien The Siege
“Leaders have two characteristics: (1) they are going somewhere; (2) they can persuade others to go with them.”
D.P. Diffiné, “The 1993 American Incentive System Almanac”.
"The consciousness of genius is bad for people."
Virginia Woolf in The Diary of Virginia Woolf, re Robert Graves, quoted in Raleigh Trevelyan’s Introduction to Robert Graves Goodbye to All That
"Religion makes us joyful about the things that matter. Fashionable frivolity makes us sad about the things that do not matter."
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News, February 16, 1924, quoted in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 3 #8, July/August 2000
"The commander of the local French naval district… answered as if he were conversing with a fungus."
Clive Cussler in The Sea Hunters (a true story, in which the commander is answering Cussler)
"The most dangerous thing in the world is to be alive; one is always in danger of one’s life. But anyone who shrinks from this is a traitor to the great scheme and experiment of being."
G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News October 21, 1905, quoted in Dale Ahlquist and Peter Floriani, Chesterton University Student Handbook
"This is not to say that there may not be a case in justice for correcting positions which have been determined by earlier unjust acts or institutions. But unless such injustice is clear and recent, it will generally be impractical to correct it. It will on the whole seem preferable to accept the given position as due to accident and simply from the present onwards to refrain from any measures aiming at benefiting particular individuals or groups."
Friedrich Hayek in Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. 2