Quotations

'What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass..' Lord Melbourne (Queen Victoria's first Prime Minister, for readers who do not have the luck to be English).

'Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be prevenient courage that allows us to be brave – that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honour them is a great harm. And therefore, this courage allows us, as the old men said, to make ourselves useful. It allows us to be generous, which is another way of saying exactly the same thing.' Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

Stephen Kotkin, an eminent historian of Russia, gave an interview in which he observed that to achieve stated Ukrainian war goals – the total recovery of lost territory, Putin on trial – “you have to take Moscow”. In fact the Ukrainian leaders knew those goals were not going to be realised.