One of the best ways of avoiding necessary and even urgent tasks is to seem to be busily employed on things that are already done.

One of the best ways of avoiding necessary and even urgent tasks is to seem to be busily employed on things that are already done.

Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.

In the usual (though certainly not in every) public decision on economic policy, the choice is between courses that are almost equally good or equally bad. It is the narrowest decisions that are most ardently debated.

When people put their ballots in the boxes, they are, by that act, inoculated against the feeling that the government is not theirs. They then accept, in some measure, that its errors are their errors, its aberrations their aberrations, that any revolt will be against them. It's a remarkably shrewd and rather conservative arrangement when one thinks of it.

It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought.

Ralph [ Nader] is an old friend of mine, and he does a useful job in displaying a position.