No history can be a faithful mirror. If it were, it would be as long and as dull as life itself. It must be a selection, and, being a selection, must inevitably be biased.

Born with blue spectacles, you would think the world was blue and never be conscious of the existence of the distorting glass.

Man is an extraordinarily fixed and limited animal whose nature is absolutely constant. It is only by tradition and organisation that anything decent can be got out of him.

The view which regards man as a well, a reservoir full of possibilities, I call the romantic; the one which regards him as a very finite and fixed creature, I call the classical.

All conviction - and so, necessarily, conversion - is based on the motor and emotional aspects of the mind.

All national histories are partisan and designed to give us a good conceit of ourselves.