“Who in the same given time can produce more than others has vigor; who can produce more and better, has talents; who can produce what none else can, has genius.”

Remarks to the United Nations Security Council (5 February 2003) http://web.archive.org/web/20050204130309/http://www.state.gov/secretary/former/powell/remarks/2003/17300.htm; in an interview (September 2005) http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Politics/story?id=1105979&amp;page=1 with Barbara Walters, Powell was asked about the Security Council speech and responded that it was a &quot;blot&quot; on his record… &quot;it will always be a part of my record. It was painful. It&#x27;s painful now.&quot; <br class="br">2000s

also reported in the form: The peoples of the Balkans produce more history than they can consume, and the weight of their past lies oppressively on their present. <br class="br">Although widely attributed to Winston Churchill (e.g. by the President of the British Academy, Professor Sir Adam Roberts), the quote is spurious. <br class="br">The remark was quoted - although without attribution, and concerning East Central Europe instead - by Margaret Thatcher in her speech, &quot;New Threats for Old,&quot; in Westminster College, Fulton, Mo., at a joint commemoration with the Churchill Centre of the &quot;Iron Curtain&quot; speech&#x27;s 50th anniversary, on 9 March 1996: &quot;It is, of course, often the case in foreign affairs that statesmen are dealing with problems for which there is no ready solution. They must manage them as best they can. That might be true of nuclear proliferation, but no such excuses can be made for the European Union&#x27;s activities at the end of the Cold War. It faced a task so obvious and achievable as to count as an almost explicit duty laid down by History: namely, the speedy incorporation of the new Central European democracies--Poland, Hungary and what was then Czechoslovakia--within the EU&#x27;s economic and political structures. Early entry into Europe was the wish of the new democracies; it would help to stabilize them politically and smooth their transition to market economies; and it would ratify the post-Cold War settlement in Europe. Given the stormy past of that region--the inhabitants are said to produce more history than they can consume locally--everyone should have wished to see it settled economically.&quot; <br class="br">The sources of Thatcher&#x27;s quote is likely a passage in the 1911 &quot;Chronicles of Clovis&quot;, by Hector Hugh Munro (Saki), referring actually to Crete: &quot;It was during the debate on the Foreign Office vote that Stringham made his great remark that &quot;the people of Crete unfortunately make more history than they can consume locally.&quot; It was not brilliant, but it came in the middle of a dull speech, and the House was quite pleased with it. Old gentlemen with bad memories said it reminded them of Disraeli.&quot; <br class="br">Misattributed <br class="br">Source: Reinventing the Wheel http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/reinventing-the-wheel-the-cost-of-neglecting-international-history. Footnote #5 <br class="br">Source: The speech is in James W. Muller, ed., Winston Churchill&#x27;s &quot;Iron Curtain&quot; Speech Fifty Years Later (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999), which collects the papers from that occasion. A readable .pdf is on the Churchill Centre website (scroll to pages 18-24): http://www.winstonchurchill.org/images/finesthour/Vol.01%20No.90.pdf <br class="br">Source: Full text available here: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Chronicles_of_Clovis/The_Jesting_of_Arlington_Stringham

Understanding Our Mind (2006) Parallax Press ISBN 978-81-7223-796-7

Hush Don't Say Anything to God (1999)

Source: The Fountains of Paradise (1979), Chapter 10 “The Ultimate Bridge” (p. 52)

Book VII : Modern Times, Ch. IX : The Final Consequences
Penguin Island (1908)
Context: Penguinia gloried in its wealth. Those who produced the things necessary for life, wanted them; those who did not produce them had more than enough. "But these," as a member of the Institute said, "are necessary economic fatalities." The great Penguin people had no longer either traditions, intellectual culture, or arts. The progress of civilisation manifested itself among them by murderous industry, infamous speculation, and hideous luxury. Its capital assumed, as did all the great cities of the time, a cosmopolitan and financial character. An immense and regular ugliness reigned within it. The country enjoyed perfect tranquillity. It had reached its zenith.

Literary Essays, vol. II (1870–1890), Rousseau and the Sentimentalists

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), Ch. 1
Context: It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the expression "As pretty as an airport." Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort. This ugliness arises because airports are full of people who are tired, cross, and have just discovered that their luggage has landed in Murmansk (Murmansk airport is the only exception of this otherwise infallible rule), and architects have on the whole tried to reflect this in their designs.

"Toute réaction est vraie", p. 91.
Music, Ho! (1934)