Bernard Crick Quotes

Quite apart from the prestige of technology, people do, after all, prefer a simple idea to a complex one.

The attempt to politicize everything is the destruction of politics. When everything is seen as relevant to politics, than politics has in fact become totalitarian.

The plain truth is that what holds a free state together is neither general will nor a common interest, but simply politics itself.

Politics is a way of ruling in divided societies without undue violence ... politics is not just a necessary evil; it is a realistic good.

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.

Revolutions as often take place because the old regime simply collapse out of economic inefficiency and bureaucratic rigidity rather than for the reasons given out by their successors taking too much credit, however heroic their actions at the time of crisis (but so often in the past hopeless).

The idea of a rational bureaucracy, of skill, merit, and consistency, is essential to all modern states.

Democracy is perhaps the most promiscuous word in the world of public affairs.

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.

There is no great danger to politics in the desire for certainty at any price.

Totalitarian rule marks the sharpest contrast imaginable with political rule, and ideological thinking is an explicit and direct challenge to political thinking.

If a government is to do great new things, it will need more support. If a government is to change the world, it will need mass support. This is one of the discoveries of modern government.

To Marx the claim of the theory of ideology is that all doctrine is a derivative of social circumstance.

BOREDOM with established truths is a great enemy of free men.

Monarchy is like a splendid ship, with all sails set it moves majestically on, but then it hits a rock and sinks for ever. Democracy is like a raft. It never sinks but, damn it, your feet are always in the water. That is a good metaphor, for raft, he implies, is simply swept along by the tide or the current; one can with a paddle or a plank steer a little to stay afloat, trim forward direction slightly to left or right, perhaps even slow down or speed up a little, but there is no turning back against the current of democracy.

The politician has no more use for pride than Falstaff had for honour.

The agony of international relations is the need to try to practice politics without the basic conditions for political order.

Factory workers are not working for capitalism, they are working for a living wage.

Free men stick their necks out.

Politics has rough manners, but it is a very useful thing.

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

The political process is not tied to any particular doctrine. Genuine political doctrines, rather, are the attempt to find particular and workable solutions to this perpetual and shifty problem of conciliation.