Society and the World

Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else.

Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch, which ought to be applied as sparingly as possible.

A wise man recognizes the convenience of a general statement, but he bows to the authority of a particular fact.

It is not that the Englishman can't feel—it is that he is afraid to feel. He has been taught at his public school that feeling is bad form. He must not express great joy or sorrow, or even open his mouth too wide when he talks—his pipe might fall out if he did.

The main part of intellectual education is not the acquisition of facts but learning how to make facts live.

He who is too much afraid of being duped has lost the power of being magnanimous.

The masses are the material of democracy, but its form—that is to say, the laws which express the general reason, justice, and utility—can only be rightly shaped by wisdom, which is by no means a universal property.

The art of creation / is older than the art of killing.

In the dust where we have buried the silent races and their abominations we have buried so much of the delicate magic of life.

What man wants is simply independent choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead.

We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship.

We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship.

A just cause is not ruined by a few mistakes.

A just cause is not ruined by a few mistakes.

What refuge is there for the victim who is oppressed with the feeling that there are a thousand new books he ought to read, while life is only long enough for him to attempt to read a hundred?

The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal.

Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.

Savagely is necessary ever}' four or five hundred years in order to bring the world back to life. Otherwise the world would die of civilization.

Thou, O my country, hast thy foolish ways, / Too apt to purr at every stranger’s praise!

Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable.

No absolute is going to make the lion lie dow'n with the lamb: unless the lamb is inside.

Equations are more important to me because politics is for the present but an equation is something for eternity.

 

Hogmanay, like all festivals, being but a bank from which we can only draw what we put in.

 

Come, my friends. ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.