Quotes Library

March 28, 2025

A government is the only known vessel that leaks from the top.

James Reston (1909–1995), American journalist, The Portable Curmudgeon, Jon Winokur, ed. (New York: 1987), p.124

How frequently do you or would you leak? Drop a hint? Send something off in a brown paper envelope?

And good that governments do leak, else Reston (one of the most influential journalists of his day) would have had a lot fewer scoops to report.


More Quotes

December 24, 2025
Tories, in short, are atrophied Englishmen, lacking certain moral and intellectual reflexes.
January 14, 2025
[On the popularity of Margaret Thatcher] The further you got from Britain, the more admired you found she was.
August 3, 2025
The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.
Page 2 of 124