No candidate is perfect’ said Lloyd. ‘It’s how you deal with your weaknesses that matters.
In the struggle for female equality, Maud reflected, sometimes you had to fight women as well as men.
It was a sunny day in early summer, and he could hear birdsong. In a nearby orchard that had so far escaped shelling, apple trees were blossoming bravely. Men were the only animals that slaughtered their own kind by the million, and turned the landscape into a waste of shell craters and barbed wire. Perhaps the human race would wipe itself out completely, and leave the world to the birds and trees, Walter thought apocalyptically. Perhaps that would be for the best.
Carla had never before realized how much she had been protected by politicians, newspapermen, and lawyers. Without them, she saw now, the government could do anything it liked, even kill people.
He was the kind of man George had been fighting for a decade: an ugly, fat, foul-mouthed, stupid white racist.
It did not occur to them that a woman could be dangerous. How foolish they were.
Fascism is on the march,” Lloyd began. “And it is dangerously attractive. It gives false hope to the unemployed. It wears a spurious patriotism, as the Fascists themselves wear imitation military uniforms.
Everything is ultimately the Prime Minister’s fault’, said Lloyd. ‘That’s what it means to be the leader.
For me the words should be like a pane of glass that you look through, not at.
Any fool can get into a fight, but a wise man knows how to stay out of them.
After all, if you can’t kill a man in front of God’s face you probably shouldn’t kill him at all.
Sergeant Grigori Peshkov. He was elected unopposed. Grigori was pleased. He knew what life was like for soldiers and workers, and he would bring the machine-oil smell of real life to the corridors of power. He would never forget his roots and put on a top hat. He would make sure that unrest led to improvements, not to random violence. Now he had a real chance to make a better life for Katerina and Vladimir.
Erik said: “But the Aryan race must be superior – we rule the world!” “Your Nazi friends don’t know any history,” Father said. “The Ancient Egyptians built the pyramids when Germans were living in caves. Arabs ruled the world in the Middle Ages – the Muslims were doing algebra when German princes could not write their own names. It’s nothing to do with race.
Changing your beliefs with every change of monarch was called “policy,” and people who did it were “politicians.
In the Arab world, every work of art has a tiny flaw, so that it doesn’t sacrilegiously compete with the perfection of God.
Philip believed that caring for people was the service of God. That was what salvation was about.
Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.
The sight of them all made Caris marvel: each individual had a different life, every one of them rich and complex, with dramas in the past and challenges in the future, happy memories and secret sorrows, and a crowd of friends and enemies and loved ones.
He did not share his father’s belief that the Germans were a superior type of human, but on the other hand he could see that German mastery of Europe would be no bad thing. The French had many brilliant talents – cooking, painting, fashion, wine – but they were not good at government. French officials saw themselves as some kind of aristocracy, and thought it was perfectly all right to.
Any man who needs to surround himself with loyal acolytes doesn’t really believe in himself,” he would say. “And if he doesn’t believe in himself, why should I?