The central drama of our age is how the Western nations and the Asian peoples are to find a tolerable basis of co-existence.

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

At the core of every moral code there is a picture of human nature, a map of the universe, and a version of history. To human nature (of the sort conceived), in a universe (of the kind imagined), after a history (so understood), the rules of the code apply.

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.

In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs.

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 genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully.