"God, this is incredible what these people can argue about." US Secretary of State at Middle East Peace Conference, 3/11/91.

"When people asked him what [he] did for a living, he always said he was a civil servant. It was a code that was so common in Northern Ireland that it backfired and anyone who gave their profession as a civil servant was automatically assumed to be a policeman." [ Inheritance, p. 47.]

"It was the uniform of a modern West European police force and a far cry from the dark green worn by the RUC on patrol in South Armagh with body armour to match." [Inheritance, p. 89.]

"I think it is well also for the man in the street to realise that there is no power on earth that can prevent him from being bomber ... The only defence is in offence, which means that you have to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves." Nov 1932

Stanley Baldwin

"I would rather regret the things I have done than the things I have not."

Lucille Ball

"The decision to invade was totally thoughtless. It was worse than an error. Going to war on an island without having control of the air means you are bound for defeat. Despite knowing the tiny chances we had of victory, I had to fight with my unit the best I could."

"The saddest moment of all the war was the return to the mainland. The way we were received by our superiors and the country's military government was appalling. They brought the veterans in, after giving everything they had in the war, and they slipped them into Buenos Aires during the night, hiding us from the people who wanted to give us a warm welcome. They locked the soldiers in barracks. They were forbidden to talk or to contact their families. Then they were dismissed from the army. The officers were forbidden to talk about the Malvinas. They told me not to talk about it. Of course, I wasn't going to follow that order. I've been talking about it ever since."

Gen Martin Balza

"Queues are little microcosms of the social world. They show the acceptance of basic rules in human interaction, a concept of  natural justice, with little sub-rules that constitute a discussion of "fairness". The halt and the lame are at no disadvantage, for pushers and shovers are restrained from using their competitive edge. Within the rational line, there are little zones of disorder and friendship where priority is annulled." Article in the BA in flight magazine.

Dedication on Sydney Playhouse:
"True patriots we; for be it understood,
We left our country for our country's good."

"It is very difficult to agree an EU budget: it is like making sausages. You should not look too closely at how they are made; in the end it is important that they are good." of the latest budget issues in 2006

President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso

"Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza."

Dave Barry

"Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow,
Swarm over, Death!" [1937]

John Betjeman

"Intelligence Corps is one of the seven Combat Arms, along with Infantry, Artillery, Tanks, Engineers, Signals and the Army Air Corps. "

"Nothing appalled instructors throughout the Army more than the publicity about bullying in 1988 and the consequent measures to combat it." p.22.

"No matter how many candidates with brilliant qualifications fail the Regular Commissions Board, an officer, in the Army's eyes, must always be a leader and a soldier first .. there may be a certain number of technical posts which do not strictly require command skills. But, if they were filled with a new category of officer limited to these posts only, then they would form a ghetto and reduce the fluidity of postings as a whole. [The Royal Signals] and the Intelligence Corps, the two combat arms with the highest proportion of specialists, dislike the idea of an etiolated back-room breed." p. 93.

"Camaraderie amongst officers can be misleading. It may be warm and genuine, but it can also serve to camouflage rivalries and antipathies or even become a form of carapace. Evelyn Waugh .. described the camaraderie .. as 'peculiar, impersonal, barely human geniality'."

"Promotion to lieutenant colonel is 'a satisfactory goal for the good but not exceptional officer'." (quoting MOD) p. 143.

"Some men may join for the money in peacetime, but to be effective when they are needed they cannot be employees in uniform. To give them the necessary courage, they must have a collective self-confidence, based on emotional beliefs which may well be irrational and even obnoxious in the eyes of many civilians. An army .. does not march on its pay scales alone. 'If you turn us into a monetary organisation,' said a major from the Parachute Regiment, 'you get a monetary mentality'." p. 196.

"Military administration of essentially civilian matters, and above all welfare services, has never been successful. The priorities are utterly different. 'We've got to run an army,' said  senior officer shortly before the Berlin Wall came down, 'not a strength-through-joy camp'. [Army thinking has too often been that welfare must be subordinated to operational priorities]." p. 199.

"The only advantage of the FTX [formation training exercise] is that it imposes realistic embuggeration factors on the staff." [gunner CO] p. 201.

"[Senior officers] also feel that the vogue for competition can reduce training to a form of military Olympics. Winning has become more important than learning." p. 203.

"Only the long delay before the fighting [in the Gulf War] allowed British commanders to train their troops properly. This very rare luxury should not encourage the 'army-on-the-cheap' delusion that Territorial Army numbers can be included in the figure of effective fighting forces." p. 226.

"The Army in Northern Ireland is divided between the 'green army', which operates openly in uniform, and those who operate in civilian clothes and unmarked cars. One senior officer spoke of the 'field army green, as opposed to the field army you-can't-see-it-now'."
 p. 250.

 "Whatever its exact political status, Northern Ireland has never really been treated by Whitehall as a constituent part of the United Kingdom, but as a post-colonial successor state. It has therefore been neither truly British nor truly Irish. The illusion that the defensive positions across this no-man's-land will be spontaneously dismantled with the Common Market cannot be maintained much longer.
 "Eire .. cannot want a province which would erupt into a civil war far more savage than anything seen so far, and not even the most fervent Republican expects .. loyalist pieds noirs [to be] resettled in metropolitan Britain. Independence is out of the question, since the Catholic population would have no protection .. Even if historically unfair to the nationalists, the only course appears to lie in complete integration with Britain. But this integration could no longer permit a sectarian power structure. That would mean no Stormont, no Ulster Defence Regiment, and instead of the RUC in green uniforms, with its paramilitary air, there should be a British national police force in blue. It offers the only way to call the pseudo-patriotic bluff of Protestant extremists. From 1921 to 1969 Britain washed its hands of Ulster. Since then, using the Army as a shield, it has been able to keep the worst of the problem at arm's length."
 p. 277.

"The Intelligence Corps .. differs in its selection process for young officers. The attraction to fantasists is obvious. Candidates have to be good officer material first; special aptitudes come second. A brilliant linguist who cannot organise a platoon attack will never get through Sandhurst. 'We aren't too fussed as to what they read, although a good analytical subject is useful, and of course a language.'
 After passing out from Sandhurst, the subaltern spends a month at Ashford on 'corps briefing and orientation'  before he is sent off to an infantry battalion. This attachment ensures that he acquires an experience and an understanding of the mainstream Army, and also provides him with useful employment, since there are so few jobs for inexperienced lieutenants .. After at least nine months with the infantry, he returns to Ashford for three months' special-to-arm training . Depending on his specialisation, he will then go on to language training - German, Russian and Arabic are the main languages - or to his first job with an Intelligence Section at a headquarters in the United Kingdom, or to Northern Ireland .. From then on careers can follow any one of a number of paths, but all are subject to the regulated steps of courses and exams on the road to Staff College.
 The Intelligence Corps Directorate has to root for its officers on selection boards because the rest of the Army does not really understand their work, and therefore cannot judge an officer's performance .. Partly thanks to the combat arm tag, and the years of close work with the infantry in Northern Ireland, the Intelligence Corps is increasingly accepted as mainstream, and seen less and less as 'funny'."  pp. 392-393.

"A small corps, especially one working in the world of intelligence, could even produce an introverted, even paranoid mentality, but the Intelligence Corps is spread around in small detachments working closely with the field army so the risk is reduced. And although it is different from the rest of the Army in many ways, the Intelligence Corps is not as eccentric or unmilitary as outsiders might imagine. First names may be used in operational circumstances for reasons of personal security, but they are 'not as informal as special forces, who tend to be very informal in certain circumstances'."  p. 393.

"The Intelligence Corps has no real civilian equivalent, except perhaps the Security Service, which would hardly accept the loss of its personnel on transition to war. About 500 strong, of whom nearly one quarter are officers, the Intelligence Corps Territorials represent, in the words of one of their Regular Army colonels, an 'amazing range of qualifications and professions ... Lawyers and BBC producers are very happy as lance corporals. The Int Corps is one area where the one-Army concept is a reality."  p. 459

"The politicians have got to decide what their commitments are. Only when resources and commitments are balanced will you get any confidence."  unnamed brigadier, p. 474.

"'The Army must be responsible in national affairs' - the tradition of steering clear of politics still holds good on this side of the Channel. If the British soldier ever harboured the illusion that military solutions can be imposed on national problems, the Falklands conflict, where the enemy was a country ruined by its armed forces, should certainly have helped to cure it."  p. 477.

"The British Army is usually relaxed and good-humoured about the domestic political scene, but, if it feels threatened or besieged, illiberal views of varying degrees can emerge. This should hardly be a surprise. A somewhat Manichaean view of the world is bound to exist in any organisation which is authoritarian and a relatively enclosed order, particularly in one which has suffered considerable casualties at the hands of terrorists."  p. 477.

"Much of the British public, press and politicians still fail to appreciate that the Army is at war with the IRA, while they are not."  p. 477.

"Such regimes as Hitler's - founded on force and aimed at the lowest instincts of the people - must fall in the wake of their first reverse. (It is a sociological law)." [1937]

Benchley worked on the New Yorker with Dorothy Parker. Being sent to Venice to report on a situation in Venice he cabled "Streets full of water. Please advise."

Benchley and Parker shared a small office. When asked how small, he said "One cubic foot of space less and it would have constituted adultery."

In a speakeasy a man demonstrated an 'indestructible' watch to them by hitting, dropping and stamping on it, only to find it had stopped. "Maybe you wound it too tight." the friends chorused.

Mistaking a senior US Navy officer for a doorman, he corrected himself by saying "Perfectly all right, just get me a battleship then."

A notoriously promiscuous actress asked Benchley to help her come up with her own epitaph in a party game. "At last she sleeps alone."

At a play using much pidgin English, he threatened to leave if he heard one more line. An actress said "Me Nubi. Nubi good girl. Me stay." He rose and said "Me Bobby. Bobby bad boy. Me go," and left.

"Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought."

"Nationalism is not consciousness of the reality of national character, nor pride in it. It is a belief in the unique mission of a nation, as being intrinsically superior to the goals or attributes of whatever is outside it."

"I command an army which in the event of a conflict with Germany must immediately bear the brunt of the fighting. I know absolutely nothing about the German army. The General Staff tell me nothing. My own officers tell me nothing. I hope you will tell me something." [1918] To the new head of his Intelligence Section, František Moravec.

"Only a man who does nothing makes no mistakes."

"Leise Menschen, leise Freundschaften, stille Worte, stille Zeichen übertönen lautstarkes Gerede, lautstarkes Getue, überdauern die Kurzlebigkeit großer Versprechen, leerer Gesten.

"I [explained] .. that I had never been in favour of trying to by-pass a chain of command. To do so might confer a temporary advantage, but in the long term it always proved a certain way of creating problems in the relationships between Services and politicians, and could only breed mistrust." [ Storm Command, p. 20]

"The were occasions when [I was] told of something of immediate concern to the Government, but which I could not pass on. Was I, in that case, being disloyal and unpatriotic?
Experience has taught me that very few people are able to keep a secret: almost everybody feels the need to impress some friend or colleague by revealing new information. One person tells another, that person tells two more and the secret is a secret no longer."  [Storm Command, p. 41]

"British politicians rarely consider it appropriate to offer original planning suggestions and if they did, they were prepared to defer to military wisdom. Despite our problems in other areas, they genuinely tried to help, rather than beat their chests as potential war-winners.
In Britain .. once the politicians decide that the military are to be let loose on a campaign, they settle the level of support they are prepared to give the operation, then stand back and allow the military to get on with it. For this reason a senior general in the British Army feels much more able to delegate responsibility down the chain of command than his american counterpart."  [Storm Command, p.103]

"One of the basic principles of high command [is] that a senior military commander must bring together everyone concerned, not only in theatre, but outside as well, and that often he must act almost more as a diplomat than as a soldier."  [Storm Command, p. 104]

"The value to me [of conversation was] that I gained a clear idea of what the servicemen were thinking. Did they feel they were being kept in the picture well enough? Was their equipment adequate? Were their complaints being dealt with? What were they concerned about? Did they understand the military and political objectives behind their deployment?" [Storm Command]

"Again and again I was impressed by their level of intelligence and education. The public image of a rough, tough, bull-necked sergeant bellowing obscenities at all and sundry is out of date. Today's servicemen have minds of their own and are ready to put over their views, regardless of a visitor's rank. Moreover, they are highly trained in technical skills and expect to be treated as human buildings."  [Storm Command, p. 111]

"A good Chief of Staff becomes the voice of the commander: he reflects his commander's views, carries out his orders and interprets them in detail. It would [be] his responsibility to interpret a decision in the form of specific orders and to set the whole [thing] in motion. A Chief of Staff has a responsible and demanding job, but also one of considerable influence: he needs to be a man with experience and judgment."  [Storm Command, p. 131]