"No one is is sure of his premise as the man who knows too little."
"Chief among the forces affecting political folly is lust for power, named by Tacitus as "the most flagrant of all passions."
"Awful momentum makes carrying through easier than calling off folly."
"Government was rarely more than a choice between the disastrous and the unpalatable."
"The process of gaining power employs means which degrade or brutalize the seeker, who awakes to find that power has been possessed at the cost of virtue or moral purpose lost."
"House speaker Thomas read could see the trend, but he could not have changed himself."
"Confronted by menace or what is perceived as menace, governments will usually attempt to smash it, rarely to examine it, understand it, and drefine it."
"The utility of perseverance in absurdity is more than I could ever discern. Edmund Burke"
"He was always acting, always enveloping himself in artificiality, perhaps to conceal the volcano within."
"Connection" was the cement of the governing class."
"Let us retreat when we can, not when we must. Lord Chatham"
"Folly is a child of power."
"Policy was not reconsidered because the governing group had no habit of purposeful consultation."
"Enormity of the stakes became the new self-hypnosis."
"How much does a man's effort depend upon the age in which his work is cast? Pope Clement VII"
"That he survived, and indeed returned to government, was one of man's occasional triumphs over medicine."
"No single characteristic ever overtakes an entire society."
"Prison does not silence ideas whose time has come."
"Strong prejudices in an ill-formed mind are hazardous to government."
"Disorder is the least tolerable up sinful conditions."
"Why, since folly or perversity is expected of individuals, should we expect anything else from government?"
"He wanted AFFIRMATION rather than INFORMATION."
"He never hears the truth about himself by not wishing to hear it." Pope Alexander"
"The limitation prompting folly " was an attitude of superiority so dense as to be impenetrable."
"Far from a source of suffering, their adopted faith had been a source of power."