The average educated man in America has about as much knowledge of what a political idea is as he has of the principles of counterpoint. Each is a thing used in politics or music which those fellows who practice politics or music manipulate somehow. Show him one and he will deny that it is politics at all. It must be corrupt or he will not recognize it. He has only seen dried figs. He has only thought dried thoughts. A live thought or a real idea is against the rules of his mind.

Democracy is a political method, that is to say, a certain type of institutional arrangement for arriving at political -- legislative and administrative -- decisions and hence incapable of being an end in itself.

Joseph Schumpeter

I insist, that if there is ANY THING which it is the duty of the WHOLE PEOPLE to never entrust to any hands but their own, that thing is the preservation and perpetuity, of their own liberties, and institutions.

Abraham Lincoln

What force is more potent than love?

Igor Stravinsky

Believe me, for certain men at least, not taking what one doesn't desire is the hardest thing in the world.

Albert Camus

Temptation is a woman's weapon and man's excuse.

H. L. Mencken

I think Karl Rove saw that in George W. Bush early on and understood the impact that he could have on Texas politics and probably on national politics.

Ed Gillespie

Having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in self confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labor is immense.

Thomas A. Bennett

I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself, All right, then, I'll GO to hell.

Mark Twain

Science is not a game in which arbitrary rules are used to decide what explanations are to be permitted.

Michael Behe

Private property was the original source of freedom. It still is its main ballpark.

Walter Lippmann

The better you look, the more you see.

Bret Easton Ellis

I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled Science Fiction and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal.

Kurt Vonnegut