Secrecy is like oxygen to politicians and defense forces; there's always got to be some of it to keep them going.

They're politicians,' Win said. 'They'd lie and evade if you asked them what they had for breakfast.

Vietnam was a country where America was trying to make people stop being communists by dropping things on them from airplanes.

it's easier finding a virgin in a whorehouse than an honest politician.

"Listen, Peaches, is what humans are all about," said the voice of Maurice. "They're so keen on tricking one another all the time that they elect governments to do it for them."

All this was made clear enough to the assembled industrialists and they responded with enthusiasm to the promise of the end of the infernal elections, of democracy and disarmament.

The full story, however, is told in Steve Inskeep's recent book Jacksonland, which I will rely on for my subsequent account. "Jackson managed national security affairs in a way that matched his...

People who vote for candidates bought by private business interests are not politically free in any real sense.

In the end he required political pull to do so. After years of wandering, Grant had popped up in the right congressional district in the right state. Lincoln had the power to appoint brigadier...

Hell, no. I can't stand politicians. A politician is someone who promises you a bridge, even when there's no river.

"I take my favorite and most promising lads to the theater," said Sherlock Holmes. "I'd say that if they were born into better circumstances many would have grown up to be MPs, but in truth most are...

Public justice is the greatest kind of show, my brother. Drama. Suspense. And best of all education en masse.

{... } Rothbard explained, was "that it was intervention of the State that in itself created the classes and the conflict", not the labor relations of the economy, as previous thinkers believed

Both Buchanan and Calhoun{... } were concerned wit the failure of democracy to preserve liberty

What we are seeing today is a new iteration of that very old impulse in America: the quest of some of the propertied {always, it bears noting, a particular ideological extreme -and some would say...

In no other arena is the church at greater risk of losing its calling than in the public square.

In business and in politics a man must carve and maul his way through men to get to be King of the Mountain. Once there, he can be great and kind--but he must get there first.

1776: A declaration of the Parlement of Paris:The first rule of justice is to conserve for each individual that which belongs to him. This is a fundamental rule of natural law, human rights and civil...

He is careful to deny responsibility for September, but he does not, you notice, condemn the killings. He also refrains from killing words, sparing Roland and Buzot, as if they were beneath his...

Provence and Artois will be back. Antoinette. She will resume her state. The priests will be back. Children now in their cradles will suffer for what their fathers and mothers did.' Marat leaned...

The main thing is, the constraints have come off style. What we are saying now is that the Revolution does not proceed in a pitiless, forward direction, its politics and its language becoming ever...

There was no whimsical 'sip of wine at Thanksgiving' for us kids while we were still teenagers. This was the Clinton era, and my parents were already worried about the moral deterioration of the...

That was one of the troubles with the Istiqlal, with all politics: you talked about people as though they were not really people, as though they were only things, numbers, animals, perhaps, but not...

Fiction should always steer clear of political considerations.

The real question is how much suffering we've caused our womenfolk by turning headscarves into symbols - and using women as pawns in a political game.

It's been the same story ever since I can remember, ever since Wilson – the Republicans don't do a thing for the little man.

There's no stronger bulwark of sound conservatism than the evangelical church, and no better place to make friends who'll help you to gain your rightful place in the community than in your own...

The writer of history, I believe, has a number of duties vis-à-vis the reader, if he wants to keep him reading. The first is to distill. He must do the preliminary work for the reader, assemble the...

Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.

Chief among the forces affecting political folly is lust for power, named by Tacitus as the most flagrant of all passions.