The praise of free men is worth having, for it is the only praise which is free from either servility or condescension. - Bernard Crick

Too often the revolutionary is the man who must create order in the chaos left by failed conservatives.

Politics is too often regarded as a poor relation, inherently dependent and subsidiary; it is rarely praised as something with a life and character of its own.

One of the symptoms of a declining social order is that its members have to give most of their time to politics, rather than to the real tasks of economic production, in an attempt to patch up the cracks already appearing from the 'inner contradictions' of such a system.