Without a country, you are the basket of humanity.

Henry Adams, like most people, saw society in his own image.

Every repetition of the choice only hardened the issue.

The Englishman, as an American observed, felt himself the best-governed citizen in the world, even when in opposition he believed the incumbents were ruining the country.

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.

The fate of warnings in political affairs is to be futile when the recipient wishes otherwise.