The study of error is not only in the highest degree prophylactic, but it serves as a stimulating introduction to the study of truth.

I demand from you in the name of your principles the rights which I shall deny to you later in the name of my principles.

Before you can begin to think about politics at all, you have to abandon the notion that there is a war between good men and bad men.

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.

Without some form of censorship, propaganda in the strict sense of the word is impossible. In order to conduct propaganda there must be some barrier between the public and the event.

The study of error is not only in the highest degree prophylactic, but it serves as a stimulating introduction to the study of truth.

There is nothing so good for the human soul as the discovery that there are ancient and flourishing civilized societies which have somehow managed to exist for many centuries and are still in being though they have had no help from the traveler in solving their problems.