A.P. Herbert Quotes

He--the country parson--is not witty or learned or eloquent, but holy.

Love is life's end, but never ending. Love is life's wealth, never spent, but ever spending. Love's life's reward, rewarded in rewarding.

I turn to history not for lessons but to confront my experience with the experience of others and to win for myself a sense of responsibility for the state of the human conscience.

A servant with this clause Makes drudgery divine; Who sweeps a room as forThy laws Makes it and th'action fine.

Every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man.

What a cage is to the wild beast, law is to the selfish man.

To endure oneself may be the hardest task in the universe. You cannot hire a wise man or any other intellect to solve it for you. There's no writ of inquest or calling of witness to provide answers.

The functional language is a radically anti-historical language: operational rationality has little room and little use for historical reason.

Skill and confidence are an unconquered army.

Critics are like brushers of noblemen's clothes.

By all means use sometimes to be alone. Salute thyself: see what thy soul doth wear.

If you live in bad faith, lies will appear to you like the truth.

Please find me a one-armed economist so we will not always hear, "On the other hand..."

One father is enough to govern one hundred sons, but not a hundred sons one father.

If any speak ill of thee, fly home to thy own conscience and examine thy heart. If thou art guilty, it is a just correction; if not guilty, it is a fair instruction.

If you asked a sample of Americans "What is the temperature of Mars?" about 8% would say they don't know.

Whatever may be the distribution of uncertainty among economists, the public only gets to hear from those who have certain opinions.

Snobs talk as if they had begotten their own ancestors.

Along this road of spending, the government either takes over, which is Socialism, or dictates institutional and economic life, which is Fascism.

Come, let us make love deathless.

Those who devote their lives to earning a living are incapable of living a human existence.

The Constitution is America's glue, Democracy is the Constitution's glue.

Sportsmanship, next to the Church, is the greatest teacher of morals.

We all decry prejudice, yet are all prejudiced.

Be calm in arguing; for fierceness makes error a fault, and truth discourtesy.

When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles.

Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.

Moderation is the only rule of a healthful life. This means moderation in all things wholesome.

Caution is the path to mediocrity. Gliding, passionless mediocrity is all that most people think they can achieve.

Every winner has scars.

Things that can't go on forever... don't.

Love and a cough cannot be hid.

Spontaneity is not enough - or, to be more exact, spontaneity is not possible until there is an unconscious coordination of form, space and vision.

Even if we love someone very much, at times it happens that we forget about it.

There is not secret to balance. You just have to feel the waves.

True American Liberalism utterly denies the whole creed of socialism.

I am not a prophet in any sense of the word, and I entertain an active and intense dislike of the foregoing mixture of optimism, fatalism, and conservatism.

Facts mean nothing when they are preempted by appearance. Do not underestimate the power of impression over reality.

It is astonishing how foolish humans can be in groups, especially when they follow their leader without question.

Revenge is for children and the emotionally retarded.

A true Leader asks advice, when he has time to think; but he never asks advice in a crisis. He acts.

Short boughs, long vintage.

Marriage: A word which should be pronounced "mirage".

The devil divides the world between atheism and superstition.

Policeman are soldiers who act alone; soldiers are policeman who act in unison.

The social sciences, I thought, needed the same kind of rigor and the same mathematical underpinnings that had made the 'hard' sciences so brilliantly successful.

Governments can be useful to the governed only so long as inherent tendencies toward tyranny are restrained.

Better the feet slip then the tongue.

To a good spender God is the Treasurer.

Health without money is halfe an ague.