"Diplomacy's primary law: LEAVE ROOM FOR NEGOTIATION."

"Irritability was an occupational disease. Intolerant and intolerable belong in the same category."

"The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heard."

"Everything took on the color of blood."

"Books are humanity in print."

"Talent for oratory can simulate the need for action and even thought."

"The author says one patrician English leader saw his relationship with the populace thusly: He wasn't responsible TO them. He was responsible FOR them. He was responsible for their care."

"He wanted AFFIRMATION rather than INFORMATION."

"One English nobleman and statesman read and reread a particular work of literature because it was "the only book which allowed him to forget politics."

"I will only mention that the independent power of words to affect the writing of history is a thing to be watched out for. They have an almost frightening autonomous power to produce in the mind of the reader an image or idea that was not in the mind of the writer. Obviously they operate this way in all forms of writing, but history is particularly sensitive because one has a duty to be accurate, and careless use of words can leave a false impression one had not intended."

"House Speaker Thomas Reed could destroy an argument or expose a fallacy in fewer words than anyone else. His language was vivid and picturesque. He had a way of phrasing things which was peculiarly apt and peculiarly his own."

"Books are ... companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of mind. Books are humanity in print."

"A reformer exhorted children that they would succeed where he and his colleagues had failed with the charge: "Live for that better day."

"The art of oratory was considered part of the equipment of a statesman."

"Malignant phenomena do not come out of a golden age."

"He believed that rank without power was a sham."

"Diplomacy means all the wicked devices of the Old World, spheres of influence, balances of power, secret treaties, triple alliances, and, during the interim period, appeasement of Fascism."

"Clearly prize money received more serious attention than scurvy or signals."

"He had become, through a combination of heritage and character, a keeper of the national conscience."

"No one is is sure of his premise as the man who knows too little."

"William McKinley was a man made to be managed."

"The affair made men feel larger than life."

"Proper society did not think about MAKING money, only about spending it."

"Each one of us is serious individually, but together we become frivolous."

"That he survived, and indeed returned to government, was one of man's occasional triumphs over medicine."

"Why, since folly or perversity is expected of individuals, should we expect anything else from government?"

"Let us retreat when we can, not when we must. Lord Chatham."

"The fleet sailed to its war base in the North Sea, headed not so much for some rendezvous with glory as for rendezvous with discretion."

"The love of humanity does not prevent us from being good journalists."

"Advice to young Samuel Gompers that might apply in many other areas: "Learn from socialism, but don't join it."

"His only weakness was the habit of prophesying war within the next fortnight. George Bernard Shaw."

"Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip."

"He had the ruthlessness of uninterrupted success."

"Isolation might be more hazardous than splendor."

"Now according to German logic, a declaration of war was found to be unnecessary because of imaginary bombings."

"In writing I am seduced by the sound of words and by the interaction of their sound and sense."

"Duty was not untinged by ambition."

"To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse."

"He accomplished wonders of diplomacy on the principle, never give way, and never give offense."

"The overpowering unimportance of this MAKES ME SPEECHLESS. Speaker of the House of Representatives Thomas Reed."

"Vainglory, however, no matter how much medieval Christianity insisted it was a sin, is a motor of mankind, no more eradicable than sex."

"The limitation prompting folly " was an attitude of superiority so dense as to be impenetrable."

"A historian cannot pick and choose his facts, he must deal with all the evidence."

"Extravagant sartorial display had a purpose. It created the impression of wealth and power on the opponent and pride in the wearer which has been lost sight of in our nervously egalitarian times."

"Society's revenge matched its fright."

"Asked what would be his idea of Heaven, one statesman in 1897 said it would be to "receive a flow of telegrams alternating news of a British victory by sea and a British victory by land."

"Confronted by menace or what is perceived as menace, governments will usually attempt to smash it, rarely to examine it, understand it, and drefine it."

"These cumbersome vehicles were as convenient as if dinosaurs had survived to be used by cowboys for driving cattle."

"He believed interim reforms were necessary in order to fix the worker for his destiny."

"Even the respectable have a small anarchist hidden on the inside."