Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of the ages through which they have passed.
My love of fine art increased – the more of it I saw, the more of it I wanted to see.
The rich are not born sceptical or cynical. They are made that way by events, circumstances.
You cannot further the Brotherhood of Man by encouraging class hatred.
Before marriage, many couples are very much like people rushing to catch an airplane; once aboard, they turn into passengers. They just sit there.
Rhetoric and dialectics can’t change what I have learned from observation and experience.
Nostalgia often leads to idle speculation.
What I learned at Oxford has been used to great advantage throughout my business career.
There are heads of royal families who control hereditary fortunes that defy comprehension.
Nationalized industries are notorious for their inability to operate at a profit.
During the 1950s, Aristotle Onassis and I formed what grew to be a close friendship and association in several business ventures.
My wealth is not a subject I relish discussing.
My yachts were, I suppose, outstanding status symbols.
Whether we like it or not, men and women are not the same in nature, temperament, emotions and emotional responses.
The conformist is not born. He is made. I believe the brainwashing process begins in the schools and colleges.
It has always been my contention that an individual who can be relied upon to be himself and to be honest unto himself can be relied upon in every other way.
There is, however, hope for any person who wants to remain an individual. He can assert himself and refuse to conform. He’ll be on his own, that’s true, but while he will not have the security enjoyed by those who do conform, there will be no limits to what he may achieve.
It shouldn’t be very difficult for anyone to resist the temptation to force himself into the pattern of the structured man. One needs only to remember that a groove may be safe – but that, as one wears away at it, the groove becomes first a rut and finally a grave.
In some respects, a society in which the members reach a universal level in which they are anonymous drones by choice is even more frightening than one in which they are forced to be so against their will. When human beings relinquish their individuality and identity of their own volition, they are also relinquishing their claim to being human.
The majority is by no means omniscient just because it is the majority. In fact, I’ve found that the line which divides majority opinion from mass hysteria is often so fine as to be virtually invisible.
There is obviously something wrong with our educational system. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that there might even be something wrong with at least some of our schoolteachers. But heaven help anyone daring to express such heretical views.