Bad humor is an evasion of reality; good humor is an acceptance of it.

In journalism it is simpler to sound off than it is to find out. It is more elegant to pontificate than it is to sweat.

During the early months of the war in 1914 there was a conflict of opinion between the War Office and the Foreign Office regarding news from the Front.

We listened to the slogans of the barbarians – and this is the core of the problem – we decided that what the Marxists were saying had a point.

He was not only a bore; he bored for England.

When we got down from the ambulances there were sharp cracks about us as bursts of shrapnel splashed down upon the Town Hall square. Dead soldiers lay outside and I glanced at them coldly. We...

Television of course actually started in Britain in 1936, and it was a monopoly, and there was only one broadcaster and it operated on a license which is not the same as a government grant.

Good taste and humour are a contradiction in terms, like a chaste whore.

Actions are always more complex and nuanced than they seem. We have to be willing to wrestle with paradox in pursuing understanding.

From each one of them rose separate columns of smoke, meeting in a pall overhead, and through the smoke came stabbing flashes of fire as German shells burst with thudding shocks of sound. This was...

The Chinese understand that slave labour, which they thrive on, is not productive or useful to the economy if it is only extracted by torture.

St. Teresa of Avila described our life in this world as like a night at a second-class hotel.

People must feel that the natural world is important and valuable and beautiful and wonderful and an amazement and a pleasure.

Sex is the mysticism of materialism and the only possible religion in a materialistic society.

Attempting to get at truth means rejecting stereotypes and cliches.

I am going to fight – I, a socialist and Syndicalist – so that we shall make an end to war, so that the little ones of France will sleep in peace, and the women...

I think a major element of jetlag is psychological. Nobody ever tells me what time it is at home.

Surely the glory of journalism is its transience.