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Eric Ambler

Eric Ambler Books

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“International big business has made revolutions before now to safeguard its interests. At one time it made them … in the name of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Now, with Socialism to fight, it makes them in the name of Law and Order and Sound Finance. Assassination? If an assassination is going to be good for business, then there will be an assassination.”

“In a dying civilisation, political prestige is the reward not of the shrewdest diagnostician but of the man with the best beside manner. It is the decoration conferred on mediocrity by ignorance. Yet there remains one sort of political prestige that may still be worn with a certain pathetic dignity; it is that given to the liberal-minded leader of a party of conflicting doctrinaire extremists. His dignity is that of all doomed men: for, whether the two extremes proceed to mutual destruction or whether one of them prevails, doomed he is, either to suffer the hatred of the people or to die a martyr.”

“Yet, when these facts are seen side by side with other facts in the case, it is difficult not to become lost in superstitious awe. Their very absurdity seems to prohibit the use of the words 'chance' and 'coincidence.' For the sceptic there remains only one consolation: if there should be such a thing as superhuman Law, it is administered with sub-human inefficiency.”