Paul Hoffman Quotes & Sayings

We are all cynics now, I suppose, and even a mewling infant knows that to save a life is to make an eternal enemy. — Paul Hoffman

Even for the very clever it can be like breaking bones to stand back from something that's been in front of you all your life. — Paul Hoffman

Only inferior minds speak or write in order to discover what they think. — Paul Hoffman

In such a beast as this ... " (he means the army)" ... it was the collective power that went, collapsing like a long-exhausted animal, at once falling under its own weight as much as that of its enemy. It was a collective death and not a matter of bravery or even strength, and once it was down it was finished as a battle. — Paul Hoffman

You're the right colour for the Angel of Death, Mister Cale. But a little short.' 'I could cut your head off and stand on it. Then I'd be taller. — Paul Hoffman

What are those humps on her chest? — Paul Hoffman

The search for knowledge and the discovery of a great weapon are virtually one and the same. War is the father of everything. — Paul Hoffman

How can I know for sure if it's my son speaking and not you?"
"You never can, my lord. Just as no man can ever be sure that he alone is a thinking and feeling creature and everyone else a machine that only pretends to feel and think. — Paul Hoffman

His soul (was) ringing like a well-struck bell. But it was a bell that rang with more than joy and adoration - there was the sound there too of anger and resentment. She would not look at him because she did not want to be in his presence. She hated him and he (how could he not?) hated her in return. — Paul Hoffman

The heart of a child can take forty-nine blows before it's damaged for ever and what's done can never be undone. — Paul Hoffman

Many are called, few are chosen. — Paul Hoffman

Again she did not seem to hear, still looking into Cale's eyes. Then slowly, hopelessly, she dropped her gaze.
"I understand," she said.
It was that, of course, that pierced him as if she had stabbed him through the heart. To him it was the sound of lost faith and it was unendurable. He felt he'd become a kind of god in her eyes, and it was simply impossible to give up her adoration. — Paul Hoffman

I know everything I know about. — Paul Hoffman

In its best prewar year, Europe with almost 300 million people had a gross national product of 150 billion dollars. In that same year, the United States with 150 million people had a gross national product of 300 billion dollars. — Paul Hoffman

As far as we were concerned, we were operators, we were administrators. I don't ever recall going to Dean Acheson and asking for any counsel or advice on administration, but I had the greatest respect for him, as I have today. — Paul Hoffman

It's pointless to blame someone for being themselves and looking to their own interests. — Paul Hoffman

Think of how strange the colours and sights of the world would be for a blind man abruptly made to see or a man deaf from birth hearing the playing of a hundred flutes — Paul Hoffman

Self-pity, while it should be accorded due respect, is the greatest of all acids to the human soul. — Paul Hoffman

To be sociable is a risky thing - even fatal - because it means being in contact with people, most of whom are dull, perverse and ignorant and are really with you only because they cannot bear their own company. Most people bore themselves and greet you not as a true friend but as a distraction - like a dancing dog or some half-wit actor
with a fund of amusing stories. — Paul Hoffman

I would like to say that no man ever was given finer cooperation than that given me by President Truman. — Paul Hoffman

But I felt that most of us in the world today gave priority to our personal interests. — Paul Hoffman

Yes, Jean Monnet was the father of the concept of a United States of Europe and his efforts more than those of any other single man helped change the thinking of European leaders. — Paul Hoffman

Don't think of it as a lie, think of it as the truth under imaginary circumstances. — Paul Hoffman

If there was to be a new Europe, there not only had to be a common market, but also great mobility in labor. — Paul Hoffman

As it happens I don't think it was God- the woman who saved me, she doesn't look like she's had much to do with angels, Perhaps the Devil was behind me all the time. — Paul Hoffman

If he had listened to some of his advisors and had tried to make the Marshall Plan a political dumping ground for unqualified politicians, it couldn't have been a success. — Paul Hoffman

Hypocrites,' replied Cale, 'I've come across a lot of them recently. I mean by that I understand now how many of them there are. — Paul Hoffman

Get on your feet or die. — Paul Hoffman

The magic was in the Marshall Plan itself. It provided an opportunity for appealing and constructive work. In a sense, the mission chiefs were given the opportunity to help act as architects for the new Europe that was envisioned. — Paul Hoffman

Just as the purpose of the liver is to act as a sump for the poisons of the body, the soul has its organs for containing and isolating the toxic discharge of human suffering. — Paul Hoffman

Non numerantur sed ponderantur
(They are not counted but weighed) — Paul Hoffman

We should wage war not to win war, but to win peace. — Paul Hoffman

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air. — Paul Hoffman

- Why you?
- ( ... ) I'm the best.
- Modest of you.
- I am the best. Modesty has nothing to say about it. — Paul Hoffman

At the time it seriously troubled me, but in drafting me as Marshall Plan Administrator, President Truman did as great a favor for me as one man can do for another. It opened my eyes to many things of which I was totally unaware and it was the beginning of my real education. — Paul Hoffman

The wicked have weakness other than their willingness to kill and maim. Even the bleakest, cruelest soul can have its tender spots. Even the harshest desert has its pools, its shady trees and gentle streams. — Paul Hoffman

The older I get, the more I believe that if love is to be judged by most of its visible effects, it looks more like hatred than friendship. — Paul Hoffman

Mathematician need only peace of mind and occasionally, paper and pencil. — Paul Hoffman

It's one of the greatest mistakes of cultivated people to take it as given that because they have sophisticated minds they also have sophisticated emotions. But what kind of soul feels sophisticated hatred or sophisticated grief, for, say, a murdered child? Is the broken heart of the educated and refined person different from that of the savage? Why not say that the enlightened and knowledgeable feel the pain of childbirth, or the kidney stone, in a different way to unpolished commoner or chav? Intelligence has many shades, but rage is the same color everywhere. Humiliation tastes the same to everyone. — Paul Hoffman

Whatever discoveries have been made in the land of self-delusion, many undiscovered regions remain to be explored. — Paul Hoffman

Feeling sorry for yourself is a universal solvent of salvation. — Paul Hoffman

(Arbell)The ungrateful gorgeous bitch. — Paul Hoffman

There are times we are givers, but others time we have to let others give to us. — Paul Hoffman

T was once famously said that it is as well that wars are so ruinously expensive, else we would never stop fighting them. However well said, it seems also to be endlessly forgotten that, while there may be just wars and unjust wars, there are never any cheap wars. — Paul Hoffman

Where have you come from boy?'
He looked at her again.
'From hell, to take you away in the night and eat you. — Paul Hoffman

If you fight cruelty with kindness, it's the kindness that goes away, not the cruelty. — Paul Hoffman

Revenge is the best revenge. — Paul Hoffman

My God, Cale, if you only knew with what little sense the world is run. There has been no disaster visited on mankind that was not warned of by someone - never, not in all the history of the world. And no one who ever gave such warnings and was proved right ever got any good out of it. — Paul Hoffman

Until two days ago what had driven him was the will to survive: deep, animal, full of rage - but always part of him had not cared at all whether he lived or died. Now he did care, and very deeply, and so for the first time in a long time he was afraid. To love life is, of course, a wonderful thing, but not on this day of all days. — Paul Hoffman

And what is a good weapon but a good idea made murderous flesh? — Paul Hoffman

The mere adding of years to life is not living. — Paul Hoffman

The battle had been as hideous as you might expect between one side who were simply not afraid to die and another who regarded death as merely a door to the eternal life. — Paul Hoffman

If the dead can come back to this earth and move unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; in the garish day and in the darkest night - amidst your happiest scenes and gloomiest hours - always, always; and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath; or if the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by. — Paul Hoffman

The Europeans had made two promises to the United States if Marshall Plan help was forthcoming. The first promise was maximum self-help on the part of every country; and second, maximum mutual aid. — Paul Hoffman

The full potential of labor can be utilized only if there is mobility in labor. — Paul Hoffman

That's why it's much better not to have friends if you have the strength of character to do without them. In the end friends always turn into a nuisance of one kind or another. But if you must have them let them alone and accept that you must allow everyone the right to exist in accordance with the character he has, whatever it turns out to be. — Paul Hoffman

However, from the very beginning of the program, we made it perfectly clear that we would be out of Europe in four years; that whatever was to be accomplished had to be accomplished in that period of time. — Paul Hoffman

Treat others as you would expect to be treated by them, — Paul Hoffman

No news is ever as good or as bad as it first seems — Paul Hoffman

Among the reasons for this was the fact that the U.S.A. is one mass market. It is only when you have a mass market that large-scale manufacturing which involves very substantial expenditures can be justified. — Paul Hoffman

People treat the present moment as if it is just a stopping point on the way to some great goal that will happen in the future, and then they are surprised that the long day closes; they look back on their life and see that the things they let go by so unregarded, the small pleasures they dismissed so easily were in fact the true significance of their lives- all the time these things were the great and wonderful successes and purpose of their existence. — Paul Hoffman

Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it as it is to its victims - the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. — Paul Hoffman

Solitude is a wonderful thing in two ways. First, it allows a man to be with himself, and second, it prevents him being with others. — Paul Hoffman

The man who believes that honesty is the best policy is not an honest man. — Paul Hoffman

Listen. The Sanctuary of the Redeemers on Shotover Scarp is named after a damned lie for there is no redemption that goes on there and less sanctuary — Paul Hoffman

Sometimes, war being the unjust and drastic creature it is, those in whom he invested hopes took an arrow in the chest, the useless, by chance, thrived to irritate him another day. — Paul Hoffman

That's how the world is, and there is nothing an insignificant nobody like you, or even a significant somebody like me, can do about it. — Paul Hoffman