“Politics should share one purpose with religion: the steady emancipation of the individual through the education of his passions.”
“Well, you know, the definition of second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.”
“A society that thinks the choice between ways of living is just a choice between equally eligible 'lifestyles' turns universities into academic cafeterias offering junk food for the mind.”
“I suppose there's a melancholy tone at the back of the American mind, a sense of something lost. And it's the lost world of Thomas Jefferson. It is the lost sense of innocence that we could live with a very minimal state, with a vast sense of space in which to work out freedom.”
“Freedom means the freedom to behave coarsely, basely, foolishly.”
“Government has the role of suiting people for freedom. People aren't made for freedom spontaneously. There's sort of a 19-year race between when people are born and when they become adults. And government has a role in making them, at the end of 19 years, suited to be upright, trustworthy repositories of popular sovereignty.”
“The future has a way of arriving unannounced.”
“World War II was the last government program that really worked.”
“If you seek Hamilton's monument, look around. You are living in it. We honor Jefferson, but live in Hamilton's country, a mighty industrial nation with a strong central government.”
“Leadership is, among other things, the ability to inflict pain and get away with it - short-term pain for long-term gain.”
“There may be more poetry than justice in poetic justice.”
“Conservatives define themselves in terms of what they oppose.”
“Voters don't decide issues, they decide who will decide issues.”