There is an insistent tendency among serious social scientists to think of any institution which features rhymed and singing commercials, intense and lachrymose voices urging highly improbable enjoyment, caricatures of the human esophagus in normal and impaired operation, and which hints implausibly at opportunities for antiseptic seduction as inherently trivial. This is a great mistake. The industrial system is profoundly dependent on commercial television and could not exist in its present form without it.

All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.

The drive toward complex technical achievement offers a clue to why the U.S. is good at space gadgetry and bad at slum problems.

I've been a faithful reader of the great classical documents of economics, or tried to be.

In the United States, though power corrupts, the expectation of power paralyzes.

Inventions that are not made, like babies that are not born, are rarely missed. In the absence of new developments, old ones may seem very impressive for quite a long while.

I've become accustomed to supporting politicians who are more conservative than I am. This is not entirely a surprise.