The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it's so rare.

the central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.

Citizen participation is a device whereby public officials induce nonpublic individuals to act in a way the officials desire.

The great corporations of this country were not founded by ordinary people. They were founded by people with extraordinary intelligence, ambition, and aggressiveness.

Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from life what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth: namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government agencies to do good.

The United States in the 1980s may be the first society in history in which children are distinctly worse off than adults.