You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appals me. There is a taint of … - Joseph Conrad

There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies - which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world - what I want to forget.

Nations it may be have fashioned their Governments, but the Governments have paid them back in the same coin.

All idealization makes life poorer. To beautify it is to take away its character of complexity — it is to destroy it. Leave that to the moralists, my boy. History is made by men, but they do not make it in their heads. The ideas that are born in their consciousness play an insignificant part in the march of events. History is dominated and determined by the tool and the production — by the force of economic conditions. Capitalism has made socialism, and the laws made by the capitalist for the protection of property are responsible for anarchism. No one can tell what form the social organisation may take in the future. Then why indulge in prophetic phantasies? At best they can only interpret the mind of the prophet, and can have no objective value. Leave that pastime to the moralists, my boy.

It is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge.