Power confuses itself with virtue and tends also to take itself for omnipotence.

Some new machinery with adequate powers must be created now if our fine phrases and noble sentiments are to have substance and meaning for our children.

I do not think it is "selling America short" when we ask a great deal of her; on the contrary, it is those who ask nothing, those who see no fault, who are really selling America short!

We are inclined to confuse freedom and democracy, which we regard as moral principles, with the way in which they are practiced in America with capitalism, federalism, and the two-party system, which are not moral principles but simply the preferred and accepted practices of the American people.

The biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam is not to trust [our own] government statements.

To criticize one's country is to do it a service.... Criticism, in short, is more than a right; it is an act of patriotism-a higher form of patriotism, I believe, than the familiar rituals and national adulation.

The case for government by elites is irrefutable.