Paul Hoffman Quotes

You're the right colour for the Angel of Death, Mister Cale. But a little short.' 'I could cut your head off and stand on it. Then I'd be taller.

However, from the very beginning of the program, we made it perfectly clear that we would be out of Europe in four years; that whatever was to be accomplished had to be accomplished in that period of time.

That's why it's much better not to have friends if you have the strength of character to do without them. In the end friends always turn into a nuisance of one kind or another. But if you must have them let them alone and accept that you must allow everyone the right to exist in accordance with the character he has, whatever it turns out to be.

You should never tell your best friend anything you wouldn´t be prepared to tell your worst enemy.

That's how the world is, and there is nothing an insignificant nobody like you, or even a significant somebody like me, can do about it.

- Why you?
- ( ... ) I'm the best.
- Modest of you.
- I am the best. Modesty has nothing to say about it.

The full potential of labor can be utilized only if there is mobility in labor.

Hypocrites,' replied Cale, 'I've come across a lot of them recently. I mean by that I understand now how many of them there are.

Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it as it is to its victims - the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates.

Revenge is the best revenge.

The magic was in the Marshall Plan itself. It provided an opportunity for appealing and constructive work. In a sense, the mission chiefs were given the opportunity to help act as architects for the new Europe that was envisioned.

Again she did not seem to hear, still looking into Cale's eyes. Then slowly, hopelessly, she dropped her gaze.
"I understand," she said.
It was that, of course, that pierced him as if she had stabbed him through the heart. To him it was the sound of lost faith and it was unendurable. He felt he'd become a kind of god in her eyes, and it was simply impossible to give up her adoration.

My God, Cale, if you only knew with what little sense the world is run. There has been no disaster visited on mankind that was not warned of by someone - never, not in all the history of the world. And no one who ever gave such warnings and was proved right ever got any good out of it.

Yes, Jean Monnet was the father of the concept of a United States of Europe and his efforts more than those of any other single man helped change the thinking of European leaders.

In its best prewar year, Europe with almost 300 million people had a gross national product of 150 billion dollars. In that same year, the United States with 150 million people had a gross national product of 300 billion dollars.

What are those humps on her chest?

The heart of a child can take forty-nine blows before it's damaged for ever and what's done can never be undone.

Among the reasons for this was the fact that the U.S.A. is one mass market. It is only when you have a mass market that large-scale manufacturing which involves very substantial expenditures can be justified.

Only inferior minds speak or write in order to discover what they think.

Until two days ago what had driven him was the will to survive: deep, animal, full of rage - but always part of him had not cared at all whether he lived or died. Now he did care, and very deeply, and so for the first time in a long time he was afraid. To love life is, of course, a wonderful thing, but not on this day of all days.

It's pointless to blame someone for being themselves and looking to their own interests.

We should wage war not to win war, but to win peace.

Even for the very clever it can be like breaking bones to stand back from something that's been in front of you all your life.

Treat others as you would expect to be treated by them,

If you fight cruelty with kindness, it's the kindness that goes away, not the cruelty.

It's one of the greatest mistakes of cultivated people to take it as given that because they have sophisticated minds they also have sophisticated emotions. But what kind of soul feels sophisticated hatred or sophisticated grief, for, say, a murdered child? Is the broken heart of the educated and refined person different from that of the savage? Why not say that the enlightened and knowledgeable feel the pain of childbirth, or the kidney stone, in a different way to unpolished commoner or chav? Intelligence has many shades, but rage is the same color everywhere. Humiliation tastes the same to everyone.

But I felt that most of us in the world today gave priority to our personal interests.

Just as the purpose of the liver is to act as a sump for the poisons of the body, the soul has its organs for containing and isolating the toxic discharge of human suffering.

To be sociable is a risky thing - even fatal - because it means being in contact with people, most of whom are dull, perverse and ignorant and are really with you only because they cannot bear their own company. Most people bore themselves and greet you not as a true friend but as a distraction - like a dancing dog or some half-wit actor
with a fund of amusing stories.

There are times we are givers, but others time we have to let others give to us.

I know everything I know about.

Mathematician need only peace of mind and occasionally, paper and pencil.

Feeling sorry for yourself is a universal solvent of salvation.

The Europeans had made two promises to the United States if Marshall Plan help was forthcoming. The first promise was maximum self-help on the part of every country; and second, maximum mutual aid.

Solitude is a wonderful thing in two ways. First, it allows a man to be with himself, and second, it prevents him being with others.

Get on your feet or die.

The wicked have weakness other than their willingness to kill and maim. Even the bleakest, cruelest soul can have its tender spots. Even the harshest desert has its pools, its shady trees and gentle streams.

How can I know for sure if it's my son speaking and not you?"
"You never can, my lord. Just as no man can ever be sure that he alone is a thinking and feeling creature and everyone else a machine that only pretends to feel and think.

If there was to be a new Europe, there not only had to be a common market, but also great mobility in labor.

Where have you come from boy?'
He looked at her again.
'From hell, to take you away in the night and eat you.

Think of how strange the colours and sights of the world would be for a blind man abruptly made to see or a man deaf from birth hearing the playing of a hundred flutes

Sometimes, war being the unjust and drastic creature it is, those in whom he invested hopes took an arrow in the chest, the useless, by chance, thrived to irritate him another day.

T was once famously said that it is as well that wars are so ruinously expensive, else we would never stop fighting them. However well said, it seems also to be endlessly forgotten that, while there may be just wars and unjust wars, there are never any cheap wars.

I would like to say that no man ever was given finer cooperation than that given me by President Truman.

No news is ever as good or as bad as it first seems