In government offices which are sensitive to the vehemence and passion of mass sentiment public men have no sure tenure. They are in effect perpetual office seekers, always on trial for their political lives, always required to court their restless constituents.

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.

The news and the truth are not the same thing.

Men fall into a routine when they are tired and slack: it has all the appearance of activity with few of its burdens.

It is so much easier to talk of poverty than to think of the poor.

Men can know more than their ancestors did if they start with a knowledge of what their ancestors had already learned....That is why a society can be progressive only if it conserves its traditions.

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.