The disesteem into which moralists have fallen is due at bottom to their failure to see that in an age like this one the function of the moralist is not to exhort men to be good but to elucidate what the good is. The problem of sanctions is secondary.

We are all captives of the picture in our head - our belief that the world we have experienced is the world that really exists.

Yet this corporate being, though so insubstantial to our senses, binds, in Burkes words, a man to his country with ties which though light as air, are as strong as links of iron. That is why young men die in battle for their countrys sake and why old men plant trees they will never sit under.

The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.

True opinions can prevail only if the facts to which they refer are known; if they are not known, false ideas are just as effective as true ones, if not a little more effective.

We know that it is possible to harness desire to many interests, that evil is one form of a desire, and not the nature of it.

There is nothing so bad but it can masquerade as moral.