A Preface to Politics — CHAPTER IV

1. 1. Great revolutionary changes do not spring full-armed from anybody's brow; a genius usually becomes the luminous center of a nation's crisis.
2. 2. The orthodox economists gave capitalism the sanction of the intellect by taking their morals from the exploiter and translating them into high public policy.
3. 3. The desire for a human-centered politics is evident in slogans like 'human rights above property rights,' and politicians who don't intend to follow them still pay lip service.
4. 4. The human test as a touchstone for politics belongs to the Twentieth Century, having become a convention of the large majority only within the last few years.
5. 5. Feminism arises from a crisis in sexual conditions; the vote is a symbol for deeper aspirations about home, work, children, and relations with men.
6. 6. The statesman must understand the deeper demands behind social movements, not just their stated platforms, and find civilized satisfactions for them.
7. 7. Theodore Roosevelt is the working model for an American statesman at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, sensitive to public opinion and able to round up laggards.
8. 8. William Jennings Bryan is the uncritical prophet of American mysticism, lacking the scientific habit of mind needed for modern statecraft.
9. 9. Woodrow Wilson has a lucid and flexible mind with the scientific habit of holding facts in solution, but he does not incarnate the protest he speaks.
10. 10. We must put man at the center of politics even though we are densely ignorant of both man and politics, treating our political man as an hypothesis rather than a dogma.
11. 11. Art enlarges experience by admitting us to the inner life of others, correcting our tendency to live among generalities and symbols rather than actual things.
12. 12. Statistics are useful only to those who understand their limitations; classifications are serviceable for practical purposes but depart from objective truth.