A criminal may improve and become a decent member of society. A foreigner cannot improve. Once a foreigner, always a foreigner. There is no way out for him.

Other nations use “force”; we Britons alone use “might.”

Such then is the human state, that to wish greatness for one’s country is to wish harm to one’s neighbors.

The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us.

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.

Strangers are an endangered species.

There are chance meetings with strangers that interest us from the first moment, before a word is spoken.

The misfortune of the man of color is having been enslaved. The misfortune and inhumanity of the white man are having killed man somewhere.

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

Nationalism is an infantile disease, the measles of mankind.

Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.

We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.