Freedom is that instant between when someone tells you to do something and when you decide how to respond.

Freedom is that instant between when someone tells you to do something and when you decide how to respond.

The fact is that up to now a free society has not been good for the intellectual. It has neither read more

The fact is that up to now a free society has not been good for the intellectual. It has neither accorded him a superior status to sustain his confidence nor made it easy for him to acquire an unquestioned sense of social usefulness. For he derives his sense of usefulness mainly from directing, instructing, and planning- from minding other people's business- and is bound to feel superfluous and neglected where people believe themselves competent to manage individual and communal affairs, and are impatient of supervision and regulation. A free society is as much a threat to the intellectual's sense of worth as an automated economy is to the workingman's sense of worth. Any social order that can function with a minimum of leadership will be anathema to the intellectual.

Demagogue: one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.

Demagogue: one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.

Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.

Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."N. B.: This read more

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."N. B.: This quote is commonly attributed to Voltaire, but it is not found in his writing. - The Friends of Voltaire.

Absolute power turns its possessors not into a God but an anti-God. For God turned clay into men, while the read more

Absolute power turns its possessors not into a God but an anti-God. For God turned clay into men, while the absolute despot turns men into clay.

The successful politician owes his power to the fact that he moves within the accepted framework of thought, that he read more

The successful politician owes his power to the fact that he moves within the accepted framework of thought, that he thinks and talks conventionally. It would be almost a contradiction in terms for a politician to be a leader in the field of ideas. His task in a democracy is to find out what the opinions held by the largest number are, not to give currency to new opinions which may become the majority view in some distant future.

I do not believe that the men who served in uniform in Vietnam have been given the credit they deserve. read more

I do not believe that the men who served in uniform in Vietnam have been given the credit they deserve. It was a difficult war against an unorthodox enemy.

We once worried that democracy could not survive if an undereducated populace knew too little. Now we worry if it read more

We once worried that democracy could not survive if an undereducated populace knew too little. Now we worry if it can survive us knowing too much.