Gaetano Mosca Famous Quotes
Reading Gaetano Mosca quotes, download and share images of famous quotes by Gaetano Mosca. Righ click to see or save pictures of Gaetano Mosca quotes that you can use as your wallpaper for free.
The absolute preponderance of a single political force, the predominance of any over-simplified concept in the organisation of the state, the strictly logical application of any single principle in all public law, whether it be a despotism based upon the divine right or a despotism based ostensibly on popular sovereignty; for they enable anyone who is in power to exploit the advantages of a superior position more thoroughly for the benefit of his own interests and passions. When the leaders of the governing class are exclusively interpreters of the will of God or the will of the people and exercise sovereignty in the name of those abstractions in societies that are deeply imbued with religious beliefs or with democratic fanaticism, and when no other organized social forces exist apart from those which represent the principle on which sovereignty over the nation is based, then there can be no resistance, no effective control, to restrain the natural tendency in those who stand at the head of the social order to abuse their powers.
But when the class that monopolizes wealth and arms embodies its power in a centralized bureaucracy and an irresistible standing army, we get a despotism in its worst form - namely, a barbarous and primitive system of government that has the instruments of an advanced civilization at its disposal, a yoke of iron which is applied by rough and reckless hands and which is very hard to break, since it has been steeled and tempered by practical artisans.
If tolerance is taken to the point where it tolerates the destruction of those same principles that made tolerance possible in the first place, it becomes intolerable.
For many people, political, religious or philosophical opinions are, at bottom, very secondary matters, especially when the first flush of youth has passed and the age of practical occupations, of "business" comes. So, to some extent through indolence, to some extent through habit, partly again through mistaken pride and respect for so-called consistency of character, a man often ends, when no strong conflict with his interests is involved, by keeping all his life long a doctrine that he embraced in a moment of youthful impulse, devoting to it such little energy as the practical man is wont to set apart for what is called "the ideal.
