The really difficult moral issues arise, not from a confrontation of good and evil, but from a collision between two goods

The trouble with traditional American conservatism is that it lacks a naturally cheerful, optimistic disposition. Not only does it lack one, it regards signs of one as evidence of unsoundness, irresponsibility.

As a result of the efforts of Hayek .. and the many others who share his general outlook, the idea of a centrally planned and centrally administered economy, so popular in the 1930s and early 1940s, has been discredited.

After all, if you believe that no one was ever corrupted by a book, you also have to believe that no one was ever improved by a book (or a play or a movie). You have to believe, in other words, that all art is morally trivial and that, consequently, all education is morally irrelevant. No one, not even a university professor, really believes that.

Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of opportunity.

People need religion. It's a vehicle for a moral tradition. A crucial role. Nothing can take its place.

No modern nation has ever constructed a foreign policy that was acceptable to its intellectuals