“But I can’t go along and gatecrash.” “Nonsense, of course you can come—a guest from England! You’ll be the lion of the party. Probably half a dozen … - Fred Hoyle

My cast of mind is a very bad handicap in this age of the committee. My true thoughts when I sit on a committee are so grotesquely at variance with the business in hand that they simply cannot be expressed at all. I am overwhelmed by the fatuity of most of what is being said, and there is a constant parade in my mind of the pathetic political figures of the first third of the present century.

The policy was to keep everything in watertight compartments. In the interests of security, they said, but more likely in the interests of inefficiency.

Now do you see my point?"
"I'm beginning to see through a glass darkly. You mean that the mental make-up of a leading politician is likely to be such that he couldn't dream it possible that anyone could find the prospect of becoming a dictator wholly unpalatable."
"Yes, I can see it all, Chris," Leicester grinned. "Graft everywhere, executions just for the laughs, no wife or daughter safe.