Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility read more

Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

By the end, everybody had a label -- pig, liberal, radical, revolutionary ... If you had everything but a gun, read more

By the end, everybody had a label -- pig, liberal, radical, revolutionary ... If you had everything but a gun, you were a radical but not a revolutionary.

Except in the sacred texts of democracy and in the incantations of orators, we hardly take the trouble to pretend read more

Except in the sacred texts of democracy and in the incantations of orators, we hardly take the trouble to pretend that the rule of the majority is not at bottom a rule of force. What other virtue can there be in fifty-one percent except the brute fact that fifty-one is more than forty-nine? The rule of fifty-one per cent is a convenience, it is for certain matters a satisfactory political device, it is for others the lesser of two evils, and for others it is acceptable because we do not know any less troublesome method of obtaining a political decision. But it may easily become an absurd tyranny if we regard it worshipfully, as though it were more than a political device. We have lost all sense of its true meaning when we imagine that the opinion of fifty-one per cent is in some high fashion the true opinion of the whole hundred per cent, or indulge in the sophistry that the rule of a majority is based upon the ultimate equality of man.

All that a good government aims at...is to add no unnecessary and artificial aid to the force of its own read more

All that a good government aims at...is to add no unnecessary and artificial aid to the force of its own unavoidable consequences, and to abstain from fortifying and accumulating social inequality as a means of increasing political inequalities.

The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity.

The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

As you make your bed, so you must lie in it.

As you make your bed, so you must lie in it.

A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more read more

A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night, and a bright, infinite future.

To the frustrated, freedom from responsibility is more attractive than freedom from restraint. They are eager to barter their independence read more

To the frustrated, freedom from responsibility is more attractive than freedom from restraint. They are eager to barter their independence for relief from the burdens of willing, deciding and being responsible for inevitable failure. They willingly abdicate the directing of their lives to those who want to plan, command and shoulder all responsibility.