There is only one purpose to which a whole society can be directed by a deliberate plan. That purpose is war, and there is no other.

But what is propaganda, if not the effort to alter the picture to which men respond, to substitute one social pattern for another?

You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative; the jolliest steamroller will not plant flowers.

The principles of the good society call for a concern with an order of being - which cannot be proved existentially to the sense organs - where it matters supremely that the human person is inviolable, that reason shall regulate the will, that truth shall prevail over error.

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

The best servants of the people, like the best valets, must whisper unpleasant truths in the master's ear. It is the court fool, not the foolish courtier, whom the king can least afford to lose.

The first principle of a civilized state is that power is legitimate only when it is under contract.