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    It is a dangerous and idle dream to think that the state can become rule by philosophers turned kings or scientists turned commissars. For if philosophers become kings or scientists commissars, they become politicians, and the powers given to the state are powers given to men who are rulers of states, men subject to all the limitations and temptations of their dangerous craft. Unless this is borne in mind, there will be a dangerous optimistic tendency to sweep aside doubts and fears as irrelevant, since, in the state that the projectors have in mind, power will be exercised by men of a wisdom and degree of moral virtue that we have not yet seen. It won't. It will be exercised by men who will be men first and rulers next and scientists and saints long after.

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Ours is an abiding faith in the cause of human freedom. We know it is God's cause.

Ours is an abiding faith in the cause of human freedom. We know it is God's cause.

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As you make your bed, so you must lie in it.

As you make your bed, so you must lie in it.

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Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all!By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall. - "The Liberty Song".

Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all!By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall. - "The Liberty Song".

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I think there is one higher office than president and I would call that patriot.

I think there is one higher office than president and I would call that patriot.

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Freedom is that instant between when someone tells you to do something and when you decide how to respond.

Freedom is that instant between when someone tells you to do something and when you decide how to respond.

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Systems are to be appreciated by their general effects, and not by particular exceptions.

Systems are to be appreciated by their general effects, and not by particular exceptions.

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The State, both in its genesis and by its primary intention, is purely anti-social. It is not based on the read more

The State, both in its genesis and by its primary intention, is purely anti-social. It is not based on the idea of natural rights, but on the idea that the individual has no rights except those that the State may provisionally grant him. It has always made justice costly and difficult of access, and has invariably held itself above justice and common morality whenever it could advantage itself by so doing.

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One of the peculiarities of the American Revolution was that its leaders pinned their hopes on the organization of decision-making read more

One of the peculiarities of the American Revolution was that its leaders pinned their hopes on the organization of decision-making units, the structuring of their incentives, and the counterbalancing of the units against one another, rather than on the more usual (and more exciting) principle of substituting "the good guys" for "the bad guys.".

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It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not read more

It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.

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