Whereas each man claims his freedom as a matter of right, the freedom he accords to other men is a matter of toleration.

Private property was the original source of freedom. It still is its main bulwark.

Only the very rarest of princes can endure even a little criticism, and few of them can put up with even a pause in the adulation.

Successful democratic politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle, or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies. The decisive consideration is not whether the proposition is good but whether it is popular -- not whether it will work well and prove itself but whether the active talking constituents like it immediately. Politicians rationalize this servitude by saying that in a democracy public men are the servants of the people.

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.

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

The consent of the governed" is more than a safeguard against ignorant tyrants: it is an insurance against benevolent despots as well.