Politics I take to be the activity of attending to the general arrangements of a set of people whom chance or choice have brought together. In this sense, families, clubs, and learned societies have their 'politics'. But the communities in which this manner of activities is pre-eminent are the hereditary co-operative groups, many of them of ancient lineage, all of them aware of a past, a present and a future, which we call states.

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.

Every human being is born an heir to an inheritance to which he can succeed only in a process of learning.

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

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

The man of conservative temperament believes that a known good is not lightly to be surrendered for an unknown better.

Political action involves mental vulgarity, not merely because it entails the occurrence and support of those who are mentally vulgar, but because of the simplification of human life implied in even the best of it purposes.