The uniformity and obedience of the media, which any dictator would admire...

In general, I think, U.S. policies remain constant, going back to the Second World War. But the capacity to implement them is declining.

I felt that we could hardly improve on the conception of the university expressed by one of the founders of the modern system, Wilhelm von Humboldt, also one of the founders of classical liberalism. That seems to me true today as well, though ideals of course have to be adapted to changing circumstances.

Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state...

It is familiar to mainstream academic scholarship. One very prominent political scientist, in his standard text American Politics 20 years ago, observes that "The architects of power in the United States must create a force that can be felt but not seen."

The times are too difficult and the crisis too severe to indulge in schadenfreude. Looking at it in perspective, the fact that there would be a financial crisis was perfectly predictable: its general nature, if not its magnitude. Markets are always inefficient.

Democratic societies can't force people. Therefore they have to control what they think.