We are within measurable, or imaginable, distance of a real Armageddon. Happily there seems to be no reason why we should be anything more than spectators.

We are fighting to vindicate the principle that small nationalities are not to be crushed, in defiance of international good faith, by the arbitrary will of a strong and overmastering Power.

The War office kept three sets of figures - one to mislead the public, another to mislead the cabinet and the third to mislead itself.

Of all human troubles the most hateful is to feel that you have the capacity of power and yet you have no field to excercise it.

Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life.

When our new armies are ready it seems folly to send them to Flanders, where they will chew barbed wire, or be wasted in futile frontal attacks.

Greatness is a zigzag streak of lightning in the brain.

The army will hear nothing of politics from me and in return I expect to hear nothing of politics from the army.

There is no more striking illustration of the immobility of British institutions than the House of Commons.

At 50, don't let aging get you down. It's too hard to get back up. Happy 50th birthday.

To some people the impossible is impossible.

We cannot improve ourselves or our country without improving our educational system and educating ourselves.

The greatest wealth in the world is the wealth of time.

The U.S. cannot force Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds to make peace or to act for the common good. They have been in conflict for 1, 400 years.

Forgive me for noting that conservatives seem to believe that the rich will work harder if we give them more, and the poor will work harder if we give them less.

I can't leave England.

I had relationships with men as well as women. I wasn't choosing; I didn't think I had to.

I had always wanted to be a writer who confused genre boundaries and who was read in multiple contexts.

For mine is the old belief... There is a soil in every leaf.

I always say shopping is cheaper than a psychiatrist.

Dangle something in front of the camera. Get something surprising to be released.