Scottish novelist & politician (1875-1940)
Without humour you cannot run a sweetie-shop, let alone a nation.
JOHN BUCHAN
Castle Gay
There was never an army that did not accuse its enemies of barbarity.
JOHN BUCHAN
Witch Wood
A fool tries to look different: a clever man looks the same and is different.
JOHN BUCHAN
The 39 Steps
The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.
JOHN BUCHAN
Montrose and Leadership
There is no merit in an empire as such. Extension in space does not necessarily mean spiritual advancement. The small community is easier to govern, and, it may well be, more pleasant to live in. If its opportunities are limited its perils are also circumscribed.
JOHN BUCHAN
Augustus
A man's inhumanity to man is only surpassed by his ignorance of his fellow man.
JOHN BUCHAN
A Lodge in the Wilderness
The greatest victory is not that which is won on the battlefield, but that which is won over oneself.
JOHN BUCHAN
The Path of the King
Suppose that the links in the cordon of civilisation were neutralised by other links in a far more potent chain. The earth is seething with incoherent power and unorganised intelligence.
JOHN BUCHAN
The Power-House
The true mark of a king is not his power or his wealth, but his compassion for his people.
JOHN BUCHAN
The Path of the King
It was a very happy time, but like all happy times it had no landmarks.
JOHN BUCHAN
A Lodge in the Wilderness
The law and the constitution are like a child's pants. They've got to be made wider and longer as the child grows so as to fit him. If they're kept too tight, he'll burst them; and if you're in a hurry and make them too big all at once, they'll trip him up.
JOHN BUCHAN
The Power-House
Honest intention will not cure faulty practice.
JOHN BUCHAN
Witch Wood
Their politics are an opiate to prevent folk thinking.
JOHN BUCHAN
Castle Gay
In our modern world we have seen inaugurated the reign of a dull bourgeois rationalism, which finds some inadequate reason for all things in heaven and earth and makes a god of its own infallibility.
JOHN BUCHAN
A Lodge in the Wilderness
Every man at the bottom of his heart believes that he is a born detective.
JOHN BUCHAN
The Power-House
All life is a gamble, and every man must choose his own risks.
JOHN BUCHAN
Salute to Adventurers
A falsehood, which may be pardoned if it is to save another, is black sin if used by a coward to save himself.
JOHN BUCHAN
Witch Wood
Time, they say, must the best of us capture,
And travel and battle and gems and gold
No more can kindle the ancient rapture,
For even the youngest of hearts grows old.
JOHN BUCHAN
Prester John
Fortunately for mankind the brain in a life of action turns more to the matter in hand than to conjuring up the chances of the future.
JOHN BUCHAN
Prester John
Oh, it sounds ridiculous, I know, in Britain in the twentieth century, but I learned in the war that civilization anywhere is a very thin crust.
JOHN BUCHAN
Huntingtower