A state is absolute in the sense which I have in mind when it claims the right to a monopoly of all the force within the community, to make war, to make peace, to conscript life, to tax, to establish and disestablish property, to define crime, to punish disobedience, to control education, to supervise the family, to regulate personal habits, and to censor opinions. The modern state claims all of these powers, and, in the matter of theory, there is no real difference in the size of the claim between communists, fascists, and Democrats.

No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a democracy out of an illiterate people.

When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion. The complex is made over into the simple, the hypothetical into the dogmatic, and the relative into an absolute.

Popular government has not yet been proved to guarantee, always and everywhere, good government.

The press does not tell us what to think, it tells us what to think about.

Creative ideas come to the intuitive person who can face up to the insecurity of looking beyond the obvious.

Men fall into a routine when they are tired and slack: it has all the appearance of activity with few of its burdens.