As it is my last day with "Great Contemporaries" by Winston Churchill, I must take a moment to write down some of my favorite passages:

"There is always, as was well said, more error than design in human affairs" pg 342

"A second danger to President Roosevelt's valiant and heroic experiments seems to arise from the disposition to hunt down rich men as if they were noxious beasts. It is a very attractive sport, and once it gets started quite a lot of people everywhere are found ready to join in the chase. Moreover, the quarry is at once swift and crafty, and therefore elusive. The pursuit is long and exciting, and everyone's blood is infected with its ardour. The question arises whether the general well-being of the masses of the community will be advanced by an excessive indulgence in this amusement. The millionaire or multi-millionaire is a highly economic animal. He sucks up with sponge-like efficiency money from all quarters. In this process, far from depriving ordinary people of their earnings, he launches enterprise and carries it through, raises values, and he expands that credit without which on a vast scale no fuller economic life can be opened to the millions. To hunt wealth is not to capture commonwealth. This money-gathering, credit-producing animal can not only walk-- he can run. And when frightened he can fly. If his wings are clipped, he can dive or crawl. When in the end he is hunted down, what is left but a very ordinary individual apologizing volubly for his mistakes, and particularly for not having been able to get away? But meanwhile great constructions have crumbled to the ground. Confidence is shaken and enterprise chilled, and the unemployed queue up at the soup-kitchens or march out upon public works with ever-growing expense to the taxpayer and nothing more appetizing to take home to their families than the leg or the wing of what was once a millionaire. One quite sees that people who have got interested in this fight will not accept such arguments against their sport. What they will have to accept is the consequences of ignoring such arguments. It is indispensable to the wealth of nations and to the wage and life standards of labor, that capital and credit should be honoured and cherished partners in the economic system. If this is rejected there is always, of course, the Russian alternative." -Winston Churchill, 1934. pg 376

"'When I was in India I saw some things your people do not see. I used to go to the bazaars and to the fountains. I had a good interpreter, and lots of people came to me and talked. Your English officers are rough with the Indians; they do not mingle with them at all; but they defer to their political opinions. That is the wrong way round. Frenchmen would be much more intimate, but we should not allow them to dispute our principle of Government.'" --From a conversation with Georges Clemenceau.

And the best and last one I shall put only on Facebook, because if I put it in both places then there will be a Googleable link between my two personalities, and we can't have that CAN WE.

There are many more, but I didn't write them down at the time and I can't CTL-F a real book with real pages. Oh well, I'll have to buy myself the book at a later time.

Sorry, you do not have permission to comment.

If you are a member, try logging in again or accessing this page here.