We have got to accept Big Government for the duration-for neither an offensive nor a defensive war can be waged, given our present government skills, except through the instrument of a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores. … And if they deem Soviet power a menace to our freedom (as I happen to), they will have to support large armies and air forces, atomic energy, central intelligence, war production boards, and the attendant centralization of power in Washington-even with Truman at the reins of it all.

Decent people should ignore politics, if only they could be confident that politics would ignore them

France believes in armed intervention by America only when the intervention is in France to rescue France from occupation by other powers.

I profoundly believe it takes a lot of practice to become a moral slob.

The more complicated and powerful the job, the more rudimentary the preparation for it.

I had much more fun criticizing than praising.

I've always believed that conservatism is the politics of reality, and that reality ultimately asserts itself in a reasonably free society, in behalf of the conservative position.