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.

When everyone thinks the same, nobody is thinking.

Because the results are expressed in numbers, it is easy to make the mistake of thinking that the intelligence test is a measure like a foot ruler or a pair of scales. It is, of course, a quite different sort of measure. Intelligence is not an abstraction like length and weight; it is an exceedingly complicated notion - which nobody has yet succeeded in defining.

The common interests very largely elude public opinion entirely, and can be managed only by a specialised class.

The writers who have nothing to say, are the ones you can buy, the others have too high a price.

The decay of decency in the modern age, the rebellion against law and good faith, the treatment of human beings as things, as the mere instruments of power and ambition, is without a doubt the consequence of the decay of the belief in man as something more than an animal animated by highly conditioned reflexes and chemical reactions. For, unless man is something more than that, he has no rights that anyone is bound to respect, and there are no limitations upon his conduct which he is bound to obey.

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