Quotes from Michael Korda

In 1918, Germany suffered the ghastly consequences of defeat; France suffered those of victory, the price of which was to divide and embitter French politics and culture and lead to its defeat in 1940.

Success on any major scale requires you to accept responsibility... In the final analysis, the one quality that all successful people have is the ability to take on responsibility.

While politicians may be forgiven for failing to predict the future - who can, alas? - it is amazing that they defiantly ignore the past.

Men naturally resent it when women take greater liberties in dress than men are allowed.

Never walk away from failure. On the contrary, study it carefully and imaginatively for its hidden assets.

One way to keep momentum going is to have constantly greater goals.

The fastest way to succeed is to look as if you're playing by other people's rules, while quietly playing by your own.

The purely agitation attitude is not good enough for a detailed consideration of a subject.

The freedom to fail is vital if you're going to succeed. Most successful people fail from time to time, and it is a measure of their strength that failure merely propels them into some new attempt at success.

Your chances of success are directly proportional to the degree of pleasure you desire from what you do. If you are in a job you hate, face the fact squarely and get out.

An ounce of hypocracy is worth a pound of ambition.

Luck can often mean simple taking advantage of a situation at the right moment, It is possible to make your luck by being always prepared.

Success has always been easy to measure. It is the distance between one's origins and one's final achievement.

The biggest fool in the world is he who merely does his work supremely well, without attending to appearance.

The more you can dream, the more you can do.

This is true enough, but success is the next best thing to happiness, and if you can't be happy as a success, it's very unlikely that you would find a deeper, truer happiness in failure.

To succeed it is necessary to accept the world as it is and rise above it.

Never walk away from failure. On the contrary, study it carefully for its hidden assets.

Escapism sold books, to be sure, but not nearly as many as were sold by exposing America's flaws and making the average American reader (and book club member) look closely at his or her most cherished social assumptions. Americans might not be eager to accept integration, feminism, homosexuality, juvenile delinquency, and the drug culture– or to shoulder the blame for the existence of these problems– but they were certainly willing to read about them.

It must be nice, Queenie thought, to be one thing or another, to know where you belonged.

obedience to lawful authority is the foundation of manly character," would

Lee was a born pedagogue, never happier than when his children were learning to do something the right way. It is a testament to Lee's affection and patience that his children did not rebel. In fact, they appear to have thrived.

Cats don't think they're owned by anybody. Even behind doors and windows, like amiable Wally, they're free. Always. That may, in fact, be the most important thing about them.

It is worth noting that the desert provides every kind of torment-- heat, cold, rain, flash floods, windstorms, biting insects, and sandstorms, sometimes all on the same day.