The fact that slaughter [battle] is a horrifying spectacle must make us take war more seriously, but [it does] not read more

The fact that slaughter [battle] is a horrifying spectacle must make us take war more seriously, but [it does] not provide an excuse for gradually blunting our swords in the name of humanity. Sooner or later someone will come along with a sharp sword and hack off our arms.

The essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the arrested and petrified civilizations of the East was and read more

The essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the arrested and petrified civilizations of the East was and is its concern for freedom from the state. The history of the West, from the age of the Greek polis down to the present-day resistance to socialism, is essentially the history of the fight for liberty against the encroachments of the officeholders.

I believe there is a limit beyond which free speech cannot go, but it's a limit that's very seldom mentioned. read more

I believe there is a limit beyond which free speech cannot go, but it's a limit that's very seldom mentioned. It's the point where free speech begins to collide with the right to privacy. I don't think there are any other conditions to free speech. I've got a right to say and believe anything I please, but I haven't got a right to press it on anybody else. .... Nobody's got a right to be a nuisance to his neighbors.

Justice is incidental to law and order.

Justice is incidental to law and order.

To complain of lack of leadership is, in the field of political affairs, the characteristic attitude of all harbingers of read more

To complain of lack of leadership is, in the field of political affairs, the characteristic attitude of all harbingers of dictatorship.

Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear.

Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear.

Except in the sacred texts of democracy and in the incantations of orators, we hardly take the trouble to pretend read more

Except in the sacred texts of democracy and in the incantations of orators, we hardly take the trouble to pretend that the rule of the majority is not at bottom a rule of force. What other virtue can there be in fifty-one percent except the brute fact that fifty-one is more than forty-nine? The rule of fifty-one per cent is a convenience, it is for certain matters a satisfactory political device, it is for others the lesser of two evils, and for others it is acceptable because we do not know any less troublesome method of obtaining a political decision. But it may easily become an absurd tyranny if we regard it worshipfully, as though it were more than a political device. We have lost all sense of its true meaning when we imagine that the opinion of fifty-one per cent is in some high fashion the true opinion of the whole hundred per cent, or indulge in the sophistry that the rule of a majority is based upon the ultimate equality of man.

Be England what she will, with all her faults she is my country still.

Be England what she will, with all her faults she is my country still.

We just did a survey that showed.... something like 65 percent of the [American] people couldn't vote for the First read more

We just did a survey that showed.... something like 65 percent of the [American] people couldn't vote for the First Amendment if it was up for a vote today.