Robinson Crusoe, the self-sufficient man, could not have lived in New York city.

Democracy is much too important to be left to public opinion.

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.

In really hard times the rules of the game are altered. The inchoate mass begins to stir. It becomes potent, and when it strikes, it strikes with incredible emphasis. Those are the rare occasions when a national will emerges from the scattered, specialized, or indifferent blocs of voters who ordinarily elect the politicians. Those are for good or evil the great occasions in a nation's history.

The simple opposition between the people and big business has disappeared because the people themselves have become so deeply involved in big business.

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 invisible government [bosses] is malign. But the evil doesn't come from the fact that it plays horse with the Newtonian theory of the constitution. What is dangerous about it is that we do not see it, cannot use it, and are compelled to submit to it.