The succession multiplied the harm. Each passed on his conception of the papacy unchanged.
Preconceived, fixed notions can be more damaging than cannon.
Of England's patrician class, the author writes: It was easy to be agreeable when everything was done to keep them in comfort and ease.
He had been present in their minds not as a man but as an idea.
The utility of perseverance in absurdity is more than I could ever discern. Edmund Burke
He had the ruthlessness of uninterrupted success.
The love of humanity does not prevent us from being good journalists.
Malignant phenomena do not come out of a golden age.
Why, since folly or perversity is expected of individuals, should we expect anything else from government?
Even his own speeches bored him.
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.
Diplomacy's primary law: LEAVE ROOM FOR NEGOTIATION.
His only weakness was the habit of prophesying war within the next fortnight. George Bernard Shaw
Each one of us is serious individually, but together we become frivolous.
Civilians who volunteer generally wish to escape, not to share, privatizations worse than their own.
Books are humanity in print.
How much does a man's effort depend upon the age in which his work is cast? Pope Clement VII
He was always acting, always enveloping himself in artificiality, perhaps to conceal the volcano within.
Advice to young Samuel Gompers that might apply in many other areas: Learn from socialism, but don't join it.
He believed that rank without power was a sham.