I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.

Off goes the head of the king, and tyranny gives way to freedom. The change seems abysmal. Then, bit by bit, the face of freedom hardens, and by and by it is the old face of tyranny. Then another cycle, and another. But under the play of all these opposites there is something fundamental and permanent — the basic delusion that men may be governed and yet be free.

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.