What the public does is not to express its opinions but to align itself for or against a proposal. If that theory is accepted, we must abandon the notion that democratic government can be the direct expression of the will of the people. We must abandon the notion that the people govern. Instead, we must adopt the theory that, by their occasional mobilizations as a majority, people support or oppose the individuals who actually govern. We must say that the popular will does not direct continuously but that it intervenes occasionally.

We must protect the right of our opponents to speak because we must hear what they have to say.

When philosophers try to be politicians they generally cease to be philosophers.

It is easier to develop great power than it is to know how to use it wisely.

Happiness cannot be the reward of virtue; it must be the intelligible consequence of it.

Almost always tradition is nothing but a record and a machine-made imitation of the habits that our ancestors created. The average conservative is a slave to the most incidental and trivial part of his forefathers glory - to the archaic formula which happened to express their genius or the eighteenth-century contrivance by which for a time it was served.

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.