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.

What each man does is based not on direct and certain knowledge, but on pictures made by himself or given to him...

Inevitably our opinions cover a bigger space, a longer reach of time, a greater number of things, than we can directly observe. They have, therefore, to be pieced together out of what others have reported and what we can imagine.

Once you touch the biographies of human beings, the notion that political beliefs are logically determined collapses like a pricked balloon.

There is no arguing with the pretenders to a divine knowledge and to a divine mission. They are possessed with the sin of pride, they have yielded to the perennial temptation.

The man who raises new issues has always been distasteful to politicians. He musses up what had been so tidily arranged.

It is so much easier to talk of poverty than to think of the poor.