An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with read more

An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life. - Beyond the Horizon, 1942.

Politics: (noun) From Greek, poly, meaning many, and ticks, meaning bloodsuckers.

Politics: (noun) From Greek, poly, meaning many, and ticks, meaning bloodsuckers.

Politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.

Politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.

No serious historian of politics would imagine that he had accounted for the protective tariff of the system of bounties read more

No serious historian of politics would imagine that he had accounted for the protective tariff of the system of bounties or subsidies, for the monetary and banking laws, for the state of law in regard to corporate privileges and immunities, for the actual status of property rights, for agricultural or for labor policies, until he had gone behind the general claims and the abstract justifications and had identified the specifically interested groups which promoted the specific law.

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

All political theories assume, of course, that most individuals are very ignorant. Those who plead for liberty differ from the read more

All political theories assume, of course, that most individuals are very ignorant. Those who plead for liberty differ from the rest in that they include among the ignorant themselves as well as the wisest.

I've never professed to be anything but an average student.

I've never professed to be anything but an average student.

It is a dangerous and idle dream to think that the state can become rule by philosophers turned kings or read more

It is a dangerous and idle dream to think that the state can become rule by philosophers turned kings or scientists turned commissars. For if philosophers become kings or scientists commissars, they become politicians, and the powers given to the state are powers given to men who are rulers of states, men subject to all the limitations and temptations of their dangerous craft. Unless this is borne in mind, there will be a dangerous optimistic tendency to sweep aside doubts and fears as irrelevant, since, in the state that the projectors have in mind, power will be exercised by men of a wisdom and degree of moral virtue that we have not yet seen. It won't. It will be exercised by men who will be men first and rulers next and scientists and saints long after.

One can become a leader only if one is supported by an ideology which makes other people tractable and accommodating.

One can become a leader only if one is supported by an ideology which makes other people tractable and accommodating.