Popularity makes no law invulnerable to invalidation. Americans accept judicial supervision of their democracy - judicial review of popular but possibly unconstitutional statutes - because they know that if the Constitution is truly to constitute the nation, it must trump some majority preferences.

The pursuit of perfection prevents achievement of the satisfactory.

Perhaps the soundest advice for parents is: Lighten up. People have been raising children for approximately as long as there have been people.

All children find chaos congenial. Any unruliness, even by nature, advances the child's program of subverting authority.

All politics takes place on a slippery slope. The most important four words in politics are up to a point.

The reformers' preferred metaphor is "leveling the playing field." They should listen to the logic of their language: fields are leveled by bulldozers.

Commercial society regards people as bundles of appetites, a conception that turns human beings inside out, leaving nothing to be regarded as inherently private.