An ambassador is not simply an agent; he is also a spectacle.

An ambassador is not simply an agent; he is also a spectacle.

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.

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.

The state is the great fiction by which everybody tries to live at the expense of everybody else.

The state is the great fiction by which everybody tries to live at the expense of everybody else.

Justice, like liberty and coercion, is a concept which, for the sake of clarity, ought to be confined to the read more

Justice, like liberty and coercion, is a concept which, for the sake of clarity, ought to be confined to the deliberate treatment of men by other men.

There is no such thing as a nonpolitical speech by a politician.

There is no such thing as a nonpolitical speech by a politician.

Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to read more

Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule -and both commonly succeed, and are right.

I am working for the time when unqualified blacks, browns, and women join the unqualified men in running our government.

I am working for the time when unqualified blacks, browns, and women join the unqualified men in running our government.

Power always has to be kept in check; power exercised in secret, especially under the cloak of national security, is read more

Power always has to be kept in check; power exercised in secret, especially under the cloak of national security, is doubly dangerous.