A.P. Herbert Quotes

Give as few orders as possible," his father had told him once long ago. "Once you've given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject.

Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual.

It is easy to be tolerant of the principles of other people if you have none of your own.

Woe to the house where there is no chiding.

The virtue of some people consists wholly in condemning the vices in others.

Hee that workes after his owne manner, his head akes not at the matter.

Survival is the ability to swim in strange water.

A woman and a glasse are ever in danger. [A woman and a glass are ever in danger.]

February makes a bridge and March breakes it. [February makes a bridge, and March breaks it.]

A good rider on a good horse is as much above himself and others as the world can make him.

Hee hath not liv'd, that lives not after death.

And always, he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning 'That path leads ever down into stagnation.

His bark is worse than his bite.

The offender never pardons.

Good subjects must feel guilty. The guilt begins as a feeling of failure. The good autocrat provides many opportunities for failure in the populace.

You aren't thinking or really existing unless you're willing to risk even your own sanity in the judgement of your existence.

A handful of good life is better than a bushel of learning.

Laws to suppress tend to strengthen what they would prohibit.

The highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences.

Throw away thy rod, throw away thy wrath; O my God, take the gentle path.

Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.

What greater gift is there than to demonstrate you need not fear death?

A voice hissed: "He sheds tears!" It was taken around the ring "Usal gives moisture to the dead!" He felt fingers touch his damp cheek, heard the awed whispers.

Preaching nonviolence on principle reproduces the existing institutionalized violence.

The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we do to each other.

It is a wise man that does know the contented man is never poor, whilst the discontented man is never rich.

An old dog barks not in vain.

The fact disclosed by a survey of the past that majorities have been wrong must not blind us to the complementary fact that majorities have usually not been entirely wrong.

Each time I think I’ve reached a limit....there is a door....it opens....and the limit is gone.

While the crash only took place six months ago, I am convinced we have passed the worst and with continued unity of effort we shall rapidly recover.

There is no fate that plans men's lives. Whatever comes to us, good or bad, is usually the result of our own action or lack of action.

Fishing is more than fish; it is the vitalizing lure to outdoor life.

If money is all that a man makes, then he will be poor - poor in happiness, poor in all that makes life worth living.

how can a democratic discourse exist in a corporate owned informational system? Who, for example, possesses freedom of speech in such a society?

The men who succeed are the efficient few.

Conservatism defends those coercive arrangements which a still-lingering savageness makes requisite. Radicalism endeavours to realize a state more in harmony with the character of the ideal man.

There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.

Providence and Manifest Destiny are synonyms often invoked to support arguments based on wishful thinking.

No philosopher's stone of a constitution can produce golden conduct from leaden instincts.

aven, I have given up smoking again!... God! I feel fit. Homicidal, but fit. A different man. Irritable, moody, depressed, rude, nervy, perhaps; but the lungs are fine.

A generating function is a clothesline on which we hang up a sequence of numbers for display.

Silence is often the best thing to say.

There is nothing an economist should fear so much as applause.

However insignificant the minority, and however trifling the proposed trespass against their rights, no such trespass is permissible.

The essential trait in the moral consciousness, is the control of some feeling or feelings by some other feeling or feelings.

Woe be to him that reads but one book.

A lean compromise is better than a fat lawsuit.

Hope is the poor man's bread.

Education is no substitute for intelligence.

People are beginning to see that the first requisite to success in life is to be a good animal.