We are all captives of the picture in our head - our belief that the world we have experienced is the world that really exists.

Here lay the political genius of Franklin Roosevelt: that in his own time he knew what were the questions that had to be answered, even though he himself did not always find the full answer.

In really hard times the rules of the game are altered. The inchoate mass begins to stir. It becomes potent, and when it strikes, it strikes with incredible emphasis. Those are the rare occasions when a national will emerges from the scattered, specialized, or indifferent blocs of voters who ordinarily elect the politicians. Those are for good or evil the great occasions in a nation's history.

The common interests very largely elude public opinion entirely, and can be managed only by a specialised class.

So far as I am concerned I have no doctrinaire belief in free speech. In the interest of the war it is necessary to sacrifice some of it.

Once you touch the biographies of human beings, the notion that political beliefs are logically determined collapses like a pricked balloon.

We know that it is possible to harness desire to many interests, that evil is one form of a desire, and not the nature of it.