There is nothing more agreeable in life than to make peace with the Establishment - and nothing more corrupting.

Nothing is inevitable until it happens.

All other forms of history – economic history, social history, psychological history, above all sociology – seem to me history with the history left out.

There is nothing nicer than nodding off while reading. Going fast asleep and then being woken by the crash of the book on the floor, then saying to yourself, well it doesn’t matter much. An admirable feeling.

A racing tipster who only reached Hitler’s level of accuracy would not do well for his clients.

The male clerk with his quill pen and copper-plate handwriting had gone for good. The female short-hand typist took his place. It was a decisive moment in women’s emancipation.

In my opinion, most of the great men of the past were only there for the beer – the wealth, prestige and grandeur that went with the power.

Psychoanalysts believe that the only “normal” people are those who cause not trouble to either themselves or anyone else.

Lenin was the first to discover that capitalism ‘inevitably’ caused war; and he discovered this only when the First World War was already being fought. Of course he was right. Since every great state was capitalist in 1914.

Bismarck fought ‘necessary’ wars and killed thousands, the idealists of the twentieth century fight ‘just’ wars and kill millions.