You have to know one big thing and stick with it. The leaders who had one very big idea and one very big commitment. This permitted them to create something. Those are the ones who leave a legacy.

.. the most intelligent defender of capitalism in the modern period is Friedrich Hayek.

I have observed over the years that the unanticipated consequences of social action are always more important, and usually less agreeable, than the intended consequences.

An intellectual may be defined as a man who speaks with general authority about a subject on which he has no particular competence.

In comparison to the French Revolution, the American Revolution has come to seem a parochial and rather dull event. This, despitethe fact that the American Revolution was successful--realizing the purposes of the revolutionaries and establishing a durable political regime--while the French Revolution was a resounding failure, devouring its own children and leading to an imperial despotism, followed by an eventual restoration of the monarchy.

A welfare state, properly conceived, can be an integral part of a conservative society.

I regard myself to have been a young Trostkyite and I have not a single bitter memory.