Of the many things we have done to democracy in the past, the worst has been the indignity of taking it for granted.

Principles-and I have in mind such principles as states' rights or national sovereignty or the free market or pacifism-have a way of drying up while the sap of life goes flowing in another direction.

The taste of democracy becomes a bitter taste when the fullness of democracy is denied.

The real sadness of fifty is not that you change so much but that you change so little.

Power politics existed before Machiavelli was ever heard of; it will exist long after his name is only a faint memory. What he did, like Harvey, was to recognize its existence and subject it to scientific study.

A people's speech is the skin of its culture.

When you are seventeen you aren't really serious.