John Buchan quotes - page 6

Supposing you knew - not by sight or by instinct, but by sheer intellectual knowledge, as I know the truth of a mathematical proposition - that what we call empty space was full, crammed. (John Buchan)
There is no merit in an empire as such. Extension in space does not necessarily mean spiritual advancement. The small community is easier to govern, and, it may well be, more pleasant to live in. If its opportunities are limited its perils are also circumscribed. View quote
John Buchan
History does not repeat itself except with variations, and it is idle to look for exact parallels, but we can trace a resemblance between the conditions of his time and those of to-day. View quote
John Buchan
Civilisation needs more than the law to hold it together. View quote
John Buchan
Civilisation knows how to use such powers as it has, while the immense potentiality of the unlicensed is dissipated in vapour. View quote
John Buchan
By a principle I mean something that is an eternal and universal truth. View quote
John Buchan
This crowded world of Space was perfectly real to him. How he had got to it I do not know. View quote
John Buchan
Suppose that the links in the cordon of civilisation were neutralised by other links in a far more potent chain. The earth is seething with incoherent power and unorganised intelligence. View quote
John Buchan
Generations follow, oblivious of the high beginnings, but there is that in the stock which is fated to endure. The sons and daughters blunder and sin and perish, but the race goes on, for there is a fierce stuff of life in it. View quote
John Buchan
That kind of man is not the danger. He is a bit of the machine, a party to the compact. It is the men who stand outside it that are to be reckoned with, the artists in discovery who will never use their knowledge till they can use it with full effect. View quote
John Buchan
I cannot pry into motives. I only know of the existence of great extra-social intelligences. Let us say that they distrust the machine. (John Buchan)
He would listen, he said, to a great man talking, with one eye on the cat on the rug, thinking to himself how much more the cat knew than the man. View quote
John Buchan
I venerate the intellect of man. I believe in its undreamed-of possibilities, when it grows free like an oak in the forest and is not dwarfed in a flower-pot. From that allegiance I have never wavered. That is the God I have never forsworn. View quote
John Buchan
The true achievement of Augustus is that he saved the world from disintegration. View quote
John Buchan
I gathered from Hollond that he was always conscious of corridors and halls and alleys in Space, shifting, but shifting according to inexorable laws. View quote
John Buchan
How if Space is really full of things we cannot see and as yet do not know? How if all animals and some savages have a cell in their brain or a nerve which responds to the invisible world? How if all Space be full of these landmarks, not material in our sense, but quite real? View quote
John Buchan
The spark once transmitted may smoulder for generations under ashes, but the appointed time will come, and it will flare up to warm the world. View quote
John Buchan
We think our castles of sand are the ramparts of the universe. View quote
John Buchan
When all is said, we are ruled by the amateurs and the second-rate. View quote
John Buchan
Once again problems cannot be comfortably limited, for science has brought the nations into an uneasy bondage to each other. View quote
John Buchan
To-day we have fewer dogmas, but I think that we have stronger principles. (John Buchan)
Leithen's story had bored and puzzled me at the start, but now it had somehow gripped my fancy. Space a domain of endless corridors and Presences moving in them! The world was not quite the same as an hour ago. View quote
John Buchan
Civilization is a conspiracy. Modern life is the silent compact of comfortable folk to keep up pretences. View quote
John Buchan
I once played the chief part in a rather exciting business without ever once budging from London. And the joke of it was that the man who went out to look for adventure only saw a bit of the game, and I who sat in my chambers saw it all and pulled the strings. 'They also serve who only stand and wait,' you know. View quote
John Buchan
Civilisation needs more than the law to hold it together. You see, all mankind are not equally willing to accept as divine justice what is called human law. View quote
John Buchan