The national distrust of the contemplative temperament arises less from an innate Philistinism than from a suspicion of anything that cannot be counted, stuffed, framed or mounted over the fireplace in the den.

Democracy is born in dirt, nourished by the digging up and turning over as much of it as can be brought within reach of a television camera or subpoena.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

Never in the history of the world have so many people been so rich; never in the history of the world have so many of those same people felt themselves so poor.

Of what does politics consist except the making of imperfect decisions, many of them unjust and quite a few of them deadly?

Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what's good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.

America is about class. To pretend that it isn't is very ignorant. No society has ever existed without some kind of a ruling class.