To try to do something which is inherently impossible is always a corrupting enterprise.

The rule of law bakes no bread, it is unable to distribute loaves or fishes (it has none), and it cannot protect itself against external assault, but it remains the most civilized and least burdensome conception of a state yet to be devised.

Poetry is a sort of truancy, a dream within the dream of life, a wild flower planted among our wheat.

It is difficult to thinkof any circumstances where learning may be said to be impossible.

Economics is not an attempt to generalize human desires or human behavior; but to generalize the phenomena of price.

The politics of our society are a conversation in which past, present and future each has a voice; and though one or other of them may on occasion properly prevail none permanently dominates, and on this account we are free.

To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss.