On Elizabeth II: Lovely, inspiring. All the film people in the world if they had scoured the globe could not have found anyone so suited to the part.
ON PRIME MINISTER JAMES RAMSEY MACDONALD:
We know that he has, more than any other man, the gift of compressing the largest number of words into the smallest amount of thought.
ON THE ADMINISTRATION OF PRIME MINISTER STANLEY BALDWIN:
Decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.
His sympathies cold and wide as the Arctic Ocean; his hatreds tight as the hangman’s noose. His purpose to save the world: his method to blow it up.
ON PRIME MINISTER NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN:
He looked at foreign affairs through the wrong end of a municipal drainpipe.
ON SIR RICHARD STAFFORD CRIPPS:
There, but for the grace of God, goes God.
On SIR RICHARD STAFFORD CRIPPS:
He has all of the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.
None of his colleagues can compare with him in that acuteness of energy of mind with which he devotes himself to so many topics injurious to the strength and welfare of the State.
ON EDWARD F. WOOD, EARL OF HALIFAX:
Halifax’s virtues have done more harm in the world than the vices of hundreds of other people.
ON MINISTER OF HEALTH ANEURIN BEVAN:
I can think of no better step to signalise the inauguration of the National Health Service than that a person who so obviously needs psychiatric attention should be among the first of its patients.
ON FIELD MARSHAL BERNARD ‘MONTY’ MONTGOMERY, ALLIED COMMANDER:
Indomitable in retreat; invincible in advance; insufferable in victory.
Of all the crosses I have to bear, the heaviest is the Cross of Lorraine.
England’s grievous offence in de Gaulle’s eyes is that she has helped France. He cannot bear to think that she needed help. He will not relax his vigilance in guarding her honour for a single instant.
ON JOHN FOSTER DULLES, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE:
He is the only case I know of a bull who carries around his own china shop with him.
ON PRIME MINISTER CLEMENT ATTLEE:
He is a sheep in sheep’s clothing.
Mr. Attlee is a very modest man. But then he has much to be modest about.
EULOGY FOR FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT:
He died in harness, and we may well say in battle harness, like his soldiers, sailors, and airmen who died side by side with ours in carrying out their tasks to the end all over the world. What an enviable death was his.
