Nothing is more fatal to success at the Parliamentary Bar than to attempt to suppress or misrepresent any point, for if the Committees lose confidenc… - Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan

The erection of a great public building in any city almost always engenders controversy. The maxim that there can be no disputing about matters of taste seldom deters an eager host of critics, informed and uninformed, from rushing into print. But the new buildings of London University have had the good fortune to rise undisturbed by the clamours of contention and indeed with a degree of public approval which must be almost unprecedented... I have found, as a matter of experience, that the gravamen of complaints about any public scheme may generally be found to reside not in its intrinsic demerits but in the fact that the objectors were not consulted about it.

I must plead guilty to having borne a part professionally in the invasion of the Highlands by electric power schemes... An inscribed ingot of aluminium on my desk commemorates the event, but when from the window of the train as it approaches Fort William I see the attentuated stream which is all that is now left in the once glorious gorge of the Spean I confess to a twinge of conscience.

Throughout my advocacy of the University's cause I had experienced the truth of Goethe's maxim that it is best, if you wish to influence people, to begin by assuming that they are already what you would have them to be.