Advice to young Samuel Gompers that might apply in many other areas: "Learn from socialism, but don't join it.

Strong prejudices in an ill-formed mind are hazardous to government.

That he survived, and indeed returned to government, was one of man's occasional triumphs over medicine.

Isolation might be more hazardous than splendor.

The succession multiplied the harm. Each passed on his conception of the papacy unchanged.

The English patrician bloomed in his natural climate.

Of England's patrician class, the author writes: "It was easy to be agreeable when everything was done to keep them in comfort and ease.

Preconceived, fixed notions can be more damaging than cannon.