Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our read more

Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense?

What the public does is not to express its opinions but to align itself for or against a proposal. If read more

What the public does is not to express its opinions but to align itself for or against a proposal. If that theory is accepted, we must abandon the notion that democratic government can be the direct expression of the will of the people. We must abandon the notion that the people govern. Instead we must adopt the theory that, by their occasional mobilizations as a majority, people support or oppose the individuals who actually govern. We must say that the popular will does not direct continuously but that it intervenes occasionally.

Give up control even if it means the employees have to make some mistakes.

Give up control even if it means the employees have to make some mistakes.

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.

If a politician murders his mother, the first response of the press or of his opponents will likely be not read more

If a politician murders his mother, the first response of the press or of his opponents will likely be not that it was a terrible thing to do, but rather that in a statement made six years before he had gone on record as being opposed to matricide.

There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because read more

There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.

Lookit, I've done it their way this far and now it's my turn. I'm my own handler. Any questions? Ask read more

Lookit, I've done it their way this far and now it's my turn. I'm my own handler. Any questions? Ask me... There's not going to be any more handler stories because I'm the handler... I'm Doctor Spin.

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.

A wise man learns more from his enemies than a fool from his friends.

A wise man learns more from his enemies than a fool from his friends.