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.

To understand is not only to pardon, but in the end to love.

The justification of majority rule in politics is not to be found in its ethical superiority.

To create a minimum standard of life below which no human being can fall is the most elementary duty of the democratic state.

What we call a democratic society might be defined for certain purposes as one in which the majority is always prepared to put down a revolutionary minority.

The whole speculation about morality is an effort to find a way of living which men who live it will instinctively feel is good.

If the estimate of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs is correct, then Russia has lost the cold war in western Europe.