If experience teaches us anything at all, it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.

On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

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

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right.

Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.

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

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.

Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.

Liberation movements - prizing ends over means - are not always particular about their friends or scrupulous about their transactions.

It takes a long time to make a painter - even with a good artist's education - but without one it tries the patience of Job; it is a great thing if one does not go backward.

Everything good I've ever gotten in life, I only got because I gave something else up.

The woman had a humble, cringing manner. Of course, she had discovered that, having neither money nor virtue, she had better be humble if she knew what was good for her.

I began writing The Cold Song in the months following my fathers death, when I felt this sense of loss, disappearance, of being right in the middle of life and wondering: What now? How to proceed?

"...arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, and as a matter of law, unsupportable."

If everyone were clothed with integrity, if every heart were just, frank, kindly, the other virtues would be well-nigh useless.

.. Fear is often described as False Evidence Appearing Real.

There is a wind of nationalism and freedom blowing round the world, and blowing as strongly in Asia as elsewhere.

I never studied with Balanchine, but his work was very important to me.