“One of the symptoms of a declining social order is that its members have to give most of their time to politics, rather than to the real tasks of economic production, in an attempt to patch up the cracks already appearing from the ‘inner contradictions’ of such a system.”

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.

Free men stick their necks out.

The order of the world is always right – such is the judgment of God. For God has departed, but he has left his judgment behind, the way the Cheshire Cat left his grin.

I think that America is in danger of losing its adventurous spirit in the cause of some kind of illusion of safety, or substitute of law and order there.

I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.

Right action is better than knowledge; but in order to do what is right, we must know what is right.

I would go swaggering into restaurants in some ridiculous tramp disguise, challenging them to mistreat me, order the things I was least likely to enjoy, then hurl my plate aside in a fury and demand to see the manager.

You have to have obedience; otherwise, the idea can spread that you don’t have to listen to the orders, and it can spread to important places.

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

I was by far the least popular of the Blue Collar crew when we started. There was a definite pecking order, and everybody knew it.