The herd instinct among forecasters makes sheep look like independent thinkers.

The books that help you most are those which make you think that most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought deep freighted with truth and beauty.

Others indeed may talk and write and fight about liberty and make an outward pretence to it but the free-thinker alone is truly free.

Those who remember Washington's cold war culture in the 1980s will recall the shocked reactions to Reagan's intervention. People interested in foreign policy were astonished when in 1985 he met alone at Geneva - alone not a single strategic thinker at his elbow! - with the Soviet Communist master Gorbachev.