A disposition to preserve and an ability to improve taken together would be my standard of a statesman.
It is my principle that the will of the majority should always prevail.
The surest way to prevent seditions... is to take away the matter of them.
... Physicians tell us of hectic fever, that in its beginning it is easy to cure, but hard to recognize; whereas, after a time, not having been detected and treated at the first, it becomes easy to...
Democracy is a poor system
Conservative should tend to resist the argument that our particular crisis is a more-than-normal one, that our particular moment is a more-than-Madisonian one. Conservatism is a healthy political...
One of the {many} problems with government is not that power corrupts or even that it is magnetic to corruptible people; rather, it is that we have been conditioned to tolerate corruption in power,...
A government which is not liked by the artists is certainly a bad government, because artist sees very well what is behind the masks!
I always said a good despotism was the best form of government
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst...
A senator once confided to me that the greatest need in Washington was the elimination of the cocktail party. He said: It consumes so much of our time that we don't have time for matters of state.
Governments will be provided with the choice of either accommodating themselves to coordinating proliferating human variety or seeking to reduce that variety by repressive measures.
After 1688 the state began to rely more on talent and less on political appointees, and developed a powerful infrastructure to run the country.
Campaign contributions don't buy votes. What they buy is access.
The utopian, immanent, and continually frustrated goal of the modern state is to reduce the chaotic, disorderly, constantly changing social reality beneath it to something more closely resembling the...
In the general course of things, the popular views and even prejudices will direct the action of the rulers.
What could you do? Major Major asked himself again. What could you do with a man who looked you...
We all had to pay, but not for the crimes we were accused of. There were other scores to settle.
If I turned towards books, it was because they were the only sanctuary I knew, one I needed in order...
Hope for some means its loss for others; when the hopeless regain some hope, those in power--the...
The Red Lion was a four-ale bar with a handful of lowbrowed sons of toil who looked as though they...
if you don't understand something, you can't approximate it. You're really just guessing.
Why are they going to disappear him? I don't know. It doesn't make sense. It isn't even good...
Read me back the last line. 'Read me back the last line,' read back the corporal who could take...
Keep in mind that when we talk of a great painting we are not really talking about anything great....