“The agony of international relations is the need to try to practice politics without the basic conditions for political order.”

The idea of a rational bureaucracy, of skill, merit, and consistency, is essential to all modern states.

Since the business of politics is the conciliation of differing interests, justice must not merely be done, but to be seen to be done.

The politician has no more use for pride than Falstaff had for honour.

If a government is to do great new things, it will need more support. If a government is to change the world, it will need mass support. This is one of the discoveries of modern government.

In an abstract but real sense, Marxism arose through the breakdown first of religion and then of ‘reason’ as single sources of authority.

Too often the revolutionary is the man who must create order in the chaos left by failed conservatives.

Individualism and Economic Order and many other works, which is, to put it briefly, the whole of laisser-faire economic theory, then plainly man as such a programmed predator has very little interest in being fraternal, or very little chance.

Politics is a way of ruling in divided societies without undue violence…politics is not just a necessary evil; it is a realistic good.

To Marx the claim of the theory of ideology is that all doctrine is a derivative of social circumstance.

BOREDOM with established truths is a great enemy of free men.

There is no great danger to politics in the desire for certainty at any price.

Where government is impossible, politics is impossible.

Politics deserves much praise. Politics is a preoccupation of free men, and its existence is a test of freedom. The praise of free men is worth having, for it is the only praise which is free from either servility or condescension.

Politics are, as it were, the market place and the price mechanism of all social demands – though there is no guarantee that a just price will be struck; and there is nothing spontaneous about politics- it depends on deliberate and continuous activity.

Certainly if the fundamental problem of society is that demands are infinite and resources are always limited, politics, not economics is the master science.

Totalitarianism surpasses autocracy.

Good writing … involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing them into the tight-fitting uniform of language, making them visible and clear.

When men talk about the agony of being men, they can never quite get away from the recurrent theme of self-pity.

Good writing is the hardest form of thinking. It involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing them into the tight-fitting uniform of language, making them visible and clear.

To save a man and thereby to spare a father’s agony and a mother’s feelings is not to do a noble deed, it is but an act of humanity.

Grief is the agony of an instant; the indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.

Forgive her for how her agony reveals itself, child. This is how blood magic works. Unconditional never meant perfect anyway.

There is no answer to Auschwitz…To try to answer is to commit a supreme blasphemy. Israel enables us to bear the agony of Auschwitz without radical despair

The thorn is a bridge spanning the muddy depths of agony and sorrow so that one may on the other side dance to the drums of the rose of joy.