13 quotes
The League is dead; long live the United Nations!
Virtue consisted in avoiding scandal and venereal disease.
Life in Edwardian England (1969)
Thenceforth, the effort to abolish war seemed to me, and still seems to me, the only political object worth while.
A Great Experiment (1941)
The great difficulty of all schemes for leagues of nations and the like has been to find an effective sanction against nations determined to break the peace.
The truth is, I was never a very good Party man. Probably but for the War of 1914, I should have gone on fairly comfortably as a Conservative official.
A Great Experiment (1941)
We see the world as it is now, after these defeats of the League, and we can compare it with what it was six or seven years ago. The comparison is certainly depressing; the contrast is terrible.
The Future of Civilization (1938)
Collective effort can produce collective security and that if such effort is not made, it is because the will and the courage to make it are not there.
The Future of Civilization (1938)
I was brought up from my earliest youth to believe in the enormous importance of peace.
The Future of Civilization (1938)
There have been autocracies which have shown themselves liberal and just, even to other countries. There have been democracies which have been inspired, apparently, by feelings of bitter hatred for all foreigners.
The Future of Civilization (1938)
Do not let us underrate the danger. It threatens everything we care for. For if it does succeed, it will not only bring us back to 1914 — in itself bad enough — but to something far worse even than that.
The Future of Civilization (1938)
The Germans really conceive of their country as always under war conditions in this respect. No one expects a belligerent to tell the truth and, to the German mind, they are always belligerent. The Germans take the view that war is only intensified peace.
Patriotism or any other version of the herd instinct seems to me an entirely inadequate basis of virtue. Christianity is from that point of view an explanation of and a support for an essential ingredient in man's nature—far the best, though necessarily imperfect.
The vast majority of the peoples of the world are against war and against aggression. If they make their wishes known and effective, war can be stopped. It all depends on whether they are willing to make the effort necessary for the purpose. For, that it will require an effort, no one who considers the history of the world on these subjects can doubt.
The Future of Civilization (1938)