T. E. Lawrence Quotes

British archaeologist, army officer and diplomat (1888–1935)

Thomas Edward Lawrence [T. E. Lawrence] (16 August 1888 – 19 May 1935) was a British archaeologist, army officer, diplomat, and writer known for his role in the Arab Revolt and the Sinai and Palestine Campaign against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. Commonly referred to as Lawrence of Arabia, he adopted T. E. Shaw as a pseudonym.

From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Pen Names: John Hume Ross • Thomas Edward Shaw • Laurence d'Arabie

Native Name: Thomas Edward Lawrence

Alternative Names: Lawrence of Arabia • of Arabia Lawrence • T.E. Lawrence

From Wikidata (CC0)

All the revision in the world will not save a bad first draft: for the architecture of the thing comes, or fails to come, in the first conception, and revision only affects the detail and ornament, alas!

The sword was odd. The Arab Movement was one: Feisal another (his name means a flashing sword): then there is the excluded notion, Garden of Eden touch: and the division meaning, like the sword in the bed of mixed sleeping, from the Morte d'Arthur. I don't know which was in your mind, but they all came to me — and the sword also means clean-ness, and death.

This death’s livery which walled its bearers from ordinary life was sign that they have sold their wills and bodies to the State: and contracted themselves into a service not the less abject for that its beginning was voluntary.

Whether they are fit for independence or not remains to be tried. Merit is no qualification for freedom. Bulgars, Afghans, and Tahitans have it. Freedom is enjoyed when you are so well armed, or so turbulent, or inhabit a country so thorny that the expense of your neighbour's occupying you is greater than the profit.

The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are today not far from a disaster.