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On the subject of an ill-received play, the newly successful Shaw was cabled by a producer now offering to stage the same work he'd earlier rejected. Shaw cabled back "Better never than late."

Once a music critic he was in a restaurant with a rather tone-deaf band. Recognised by the leader he replied to a note asking him what he would like them to play. "Dominoes."

Liddell Hart once observed to Shaw, "Do you know that 'sumac' and 'sugar' are the only two words in the English language that begin with su and are pronounced shu? "Sure," said Shaw.

Noticed standing alone in a corner at a party, the hostess anxiously enquired if he was enjoying himself. "Certainly," he replied. "There is nothing else here to enjoy."

A would-be hostess sent Shaw the pompous invitation "Lady --- will be at home on Thursday between four and six o'clock." It was returned with Shaw's scribbled reply "Mr. Bernard Shaw likewise."

At dinner with a young lady, Shaw asked whether she would go to bed with a man for five hundred pounds. Smirking, she replied it would depend on how good-looking he was. "Would you do it for ten bob?" enquired Shaw. "What do you take me for?" burst out the lady. "We have already settled that question," said Shaw, matter-of-factly. "all we are discussing now is the price."

"Murder is just an extreme form of censorship."

 "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."

OTHELLO
"Rude am I in my speech
And little blessed with the
soft phrase of peace." 1.3.80

"a will most rank, foul disproportion, thoughts unnatural" 3.3.263
"I have not these soft parts of conversation" 3.3.267

HAMLET

Breathes there the man with soul so dead
 Who never to himself hath said
This is my own, my native land.  - Hamlet

O! My offense is rank
It smells to heaven
It hath the primal eldest curse upon't
A brother's murder   - Hamlet

Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour's at the stake. - Hamlet, Act IV, Scene IV

AS YOU LIKE IT

 All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.    At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school.    And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow.    Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth.     And then the
  justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and hair of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part.    The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound.    Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
 (Jaques, As you like it, Act II, Sc. 7.)

HENRY V

"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon St. Crispin's day."
Henry V

RICHARD III

'Tis better, Sir, to be brief than tedious'

The Tragedy of Julius Caesar

"There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures."

 "Never confuse enthusiasm with capability."

"Readiness challenges are not the same thing as unreadiness."
At RMAS 1998 Kermit Roosevelt lecture; C-in-C US SpecOps Comd

"History never vowed loyalty to any constitution." Bonn, 18/1/88

"Bluff was king in the intelligence service ... in the lively metaphor of the KGB resident in Rome, 'Where there are no birds, even an asshole sounds ike a nightingale'." Former KGB member of the Washington rezidentura in the mid-80s (in UK Eyes Alpha)

Yuro Shvets

"Mein Gott wie furchtbar ich zu heißen und nicht ich zu sein"  (dodgy figure of 20thC. Germany, wanted to join NSDAP, turned down)

"If we stop loving animals, aren't we bound to stop loving humans too?"

"Being shelled is the real work of an infantry soldier, which no one talks about. Everyone has his own way of going about it. In
general, it means lying face down and contracting your body into a small a space as possible."

"I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all day. "

Frank Sinatra

"Tradition is a wonderful servant and a terrible master."

"There are no bad regiments, there are only bad officers."

Field Marshall Slim

"Punctuality is the politeness of kings. It is also the duty of gentlemen and the necessity of men of business."

 "To coexist with Communism on the same planet is impossible. Either it will spread, cancer-like, to destroy mankind, or else mankind will have to rid itself of communism (and even then face lengthy treatment for secondary tumours.
Communism will never be halted by negotiations or through the machinations of détente. It can only be halted by force from without or by disintegration from within." [The Mortal Danger]

"In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers . . . we are ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations."

"I stand before you today, the representative of a family in grief, in a country in mourning before a world in shock." Princess Diana Eulogy, 1997

9th Earl Spencer

"One of the great challenges of adulthood is holding onto your idealisms after you've lost your innocence."

"Eine Dame ist eine Frau, deren Anwesendheit zur Folge hat, daß sich Männer wie Herren benehmen."

"Herrings with ideas" (His opinion of women)

"She [Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin's wife] may use the same lavatory as Lenin, but that doesn't mean she knows anything about Leninism."

"It takes a brave man not to be a hero in the Red Army."

"The fundamental principles of modern capitalism can be put this way: Guaranteeing maximum profits through the exploitation, ruination and enslaving of the majority of the population of the given country, through the systematic plundering of the people in other countries, in particular the undeveloped nations, and finally through war and economic militarization. All these contribute to high profits."

"We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance within ten years. Either we do it, or they crush us." 1928, launching first Five Year Plan.

This war is not as in the past; whoever occupies a territory also imposes on it his own social system. Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army has the power to do so. it cannot be otherwise. Stalin in Conversations with Stalin, Djilas

"Parliament, not the European Court, should be the judge of what is good for the people." 25/11/91 on Spycatcher ban in Commons.

I have the good fortune to be the first Liberal leader for over half a century who is able to say to you at the end of our annual assembly: Go back to your constituencies, and prepare for government! David Steel, 18.09.1985

David Steel

 "Officers [are] a reflection of their men, more restrained because their training is more complete, more resourceful because they have more responsibility, but the same fears are a little deeper buried in them, the same longings are more tightly locked in their hearts." [The moon is down, p. 48.

"Flies captured two hundred miles of new flypaper." p. 56 ref. to war of attrition.

 "What information he [Canadian commander] had been given by the UN was worse than useless and he felt that national intelligence sources were essential." p.37.

"Getting the operational plan properly worked out by reconnaissance in advance is crucial to the subsequent success of any operation, which is why we were spending so much time looking at the options before the final decisions were made." p.41.

"In Bosnia everyone seems to know the ethnic percentages of each town, village or even street." p. 91.

"Within [each village] the races are all very mixed up .. In times of trouble, then, it is fear which makes each village quickly put up checkpoints which owe no particular allegiance to any army - they are generated by local fears and controlled by local emotions, not any chain of command - making traversing such an area very difficult." p.134.

"Officers like myself are sustained by the realisation that they cannot show fear. Soldiers have no such incentive and therefore their fear can be the greater in my view. I define courage as the overcoming of fear, not the absence of fear. A man who knows no fear cannot be courageous - he has nothing to be courageous about." p.211.

"An officer who does not understand the value of this period of mourning runs the risk of losing the respect of his soldiers. A soldier imagines his own death when a friend is killed and sees how an officer responds, should he one day be so unlucky. Officers should take care here." p.214.

"Being where the action is taking place is one of the best lessons I learnt in Bosnia on how to conduct peacekeeping. It became a Battalion Group maxim: if there's trouble, get into the middle of it and calm things down by being there." p.279.

"How many times have I asked why Bosnia is happening? How many times have I read definitive accounts of the origins of the war to try and find the answer? Any how many times have I finished reading these authoritative accounts and still not known the answer to that fundamental question?" p.321.

"Leadership must be based on goodwill. Goodwill does not mean posturing and, least of all, pandering to the mob. It means obvious and wholehearted commitment to helping followers. We are tired of leaders we fear, tired of leaders we love, and of tired of leaders who let us take liberties with them. What we need for leaders are men of the heart who are so helpful that they, in effect, do away with the need of their jobs. But leaders like that are never out of a job, never out of followers. Strange as it sounds, great leaders gain authority by giving it away."

Admiral James B. Stockdale

 "Aufbau Ost vor Ausbau West." (On Solidarpakt etc, with Biedenkopf)

 "Under Stalin, Poland and the other countries of Eastern Europe were governed by a system of open dictatorship, uncamouflaged in any way. The Warsaw Treaty did not exist for one simple reason - it was not needed. All edcisions were taken in teh Kremlin and monitored by the Kremlin. The Defence Ministers of te East European countires were regarded as equal in status to the Commanders of Soviet Military Districts and they came under the direct command of the Soviet Minister of Defence ... The Defence Ministers of the 'sovereign' states of Eastern Europe were either appointed from the ranks of Soviet generals or were 'assisted' by Soviet military advisers ... Each adviser had at his disposal at least one tank army, several all-arms armies and special SMERSH punitive detachments. To disregard his 'advice' would be a very risky business."

"The Warsaw Treaty Organisation is a chimera, called into being to camouflage the tyranny of Soviet Communism in the countries under its occupation in order to create an illusion of free will and corporate spirit. Propaganda claims that it was as a result of the establishment of NATO that the countries of Eastern Europe came together in a military alliance. The truth is that, at te end of the Second World War, the Soviet Union took full control over the armies in the countries which it had overrun, long before NATO came into existence ...During the Organisation's first thirteen years the Ministers of Defence of the sovereign states, whether they were Soviet puppets or actual Soviet generals and marshals, were subordinated to te Commander-in-Chief, who was appointed by the Soviet government and who was himself a Deputy Minister of Defence of the USSR."

"The organisation [WTO], despite its great complexity, has absolutely no reality. The Supreme Soviet neither formulates policy nor takes decisions. It is purely decorative, like the WTO, there for show and nothing more ... The ultimate goal is the disbandment of all military blocs, in Europe and throughout the world .. If NATO is disbanded, the West will have been neutralised, once and for all. The system of collective self-defence of the free countries will have ceased to exist. If the Warsaw Treaty Organisation is disbanded at the same time, the USSR losese nothing except a cumbersome publicity machine. It will remain in complete control of the armies of its 'allies'. All that will be lost is the title itself and the organisation's bureaucratic ramifications."

"Only 3% of arable land in the Soviet Union is in the hands of private owners, and not a single tractor or kilogram of fertilizer. This 3% feeds practically the whole country. If the private owners were given another 1/2% there would be no problem with food production. But the Communists prefer to waste 400 tons of gold each year buying wheat abroad. Just try to explain this in normal common sense language."

"When Munich, Rome and Helsinki applaud Soviet marksmen, wrestlers and boxers, everyone assumes that these are amateurs. But they are not - they are professionals, professional killers."

"Soviet Military Intelligence is neither an Armed Service nor an Arm of Service. It has no uniform or identifying badge or emblem. Nor are these needed. Intelligence is a lofgistical support service, like the services concerned with nuclear warheads or camouflage or disinformation. All these services are secret and do not need publicity. Each of them adopts the appearance of the unit in which it finds itself and becomes indistinguishable from it. In numbers and technical equipment, Military Intelligence is approximately the size of the Bundeswehr - the entire armed services of the Federal German Republic."

"In East Germany there are 5 Soviet Armies, that is to say 10 electronic intelligence batallions, which keep a constant watch on the enemy, in addition to the 19 companies which are on the strength of the divisions of these armies."

"In peacetime, East European divisions see themselves as part of their own national armed forces. In war they would be distributed throughout the Soviet Armies .. For military purposes they would be subordinated to the Soviet Armies, Fronts and Strategic Directions and, ultimately, to the Soviet Supreme Commander and to his General Staff. It is because of this that the Staff of the WTO is a bureaucratic institution rather than an operational headquarters."

"If socialism is unable to feed itself in peacetime, when the whole army is used to bring in the harvest, what will happen when all the men and vehicles at present used for agriculture are mobilised for war?"

"A Tank Army is like a rushing flood, tearing its way through a gap in the dyke, smashing and destroying everything in its path. By contrast an All-Arms Army is a quiet, stagnant sheet of water, flooding a whole area, drowning enemy islands and slowly undermining buildings and other structures until they collapse."

"The Soviet Army has a completely different approach to the problems of supply from that adopted in the West - one which avoids many headaches. Let us start from the fact that a Soviet soldier is not issued with a sleeping bag, and does not need one. He can be left unfed for several days. All that he needs is ammunition and this solves many problems."

"The Communists claim that they liberated the Russian people. Yet, when the Great Patriotic War began, these same Russians greeted their foreign invaders with tears, with flowers and with enthusiastic hospitality. What can have brought them to the point at which they would greet even Hitler as their saviour and liberator?"

"True Socialism, in which everyone is truly equal, does not just resemble a prison - it is a prison. It can not exist unless it is surrounded by high walls, by watchtowers and by guard-dogs, for people always want to escape from any socialist regime, just as they do from a prison. If you continue your attempts to establish a model society you wil need to build walls around it. You will be forced to do so sooner or later by the flood of refugees."

"In Britain we have a healthy scepticism about the integrity of our intelligence services."

Spokesman for the Lockerbie families, Jim Swire

"Ein Geheimnis ist wie ein Loch im Gewande. Je mehr man es zu verbergen versucht, desto mehr zeigt man es."