I generalized rashly: That is what kills political writing, this absurd pretence that you are delivering a great utterance. You never do. You are just a puzzled man making notes about what you think. You are not building the Pantheon, then why act like a graven image? You are drawing sketches in the sand which the sea will wash away.

And the principle which distinguishes democracy from all other forms of government is that in a democracy the opposition not only is tolerated as constitutional but must be maintained because it is in fact indispensable.

The effort to calculate exactly what the voters want at each particular moment leaves out of account the fact that when they are troubled the thing the voters most want is to be told what to want.

The search for moral guidance which shall not depend upon external authority has invariably ended in the acknowledgment of some new authority.

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

The American's conviction that he must be able to look any man in the eye and tell him to go to hell is the very essence of the free man's way of life.

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.