Political Philosophy Quotes

One should not study what is best, but also what is possible, and similarly what is easier and more attainable by all. ~ Aristotle.

Our political parties exist for no other reason than to win power; they are not ideological debating societies designed to present a particular political philosophy and to persuade voters to accept it. ~ Tom Wicker

She understood that for her to excel at Oxford she had to improve her English. Her brain was in need of words to express itself fully, the way a sapling was in need of raindrops to grow to its potential. She purchased stacks of coloured Post-it notes. On them she wrote the words she chanced upon, fell in love with and intended to use at the earliest opportunity -- just as every foreigner did, one way or another:
- Autotomy: The casting off of a body part by an animal in danger
- Cleft Stick (from Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings): To be in a difficult situation
- Rantipole (from the Legend of Sleepy Hollow): Wild, reckless, sometimes quarrelsome person.
In her first Political Philosophy essay, she wrote 'In Turkey, where daily politics is rantipole, each time the system is in a cleft stick, democracy is the first thing to be severed and sacrificed in an act of autotomy. ~ Elif Shafak

Economic Emancipation Constitutes Heaven on Earth. ~ Boldwin Lebepe

Anarchism is that political philosophy which advocates the maximization of individual responsibility and the reduction of concentrated power regal, dictatorial, parliamentary: the institutions which go loosely by the name of "government" to a vanishing minimum. ~ Alex Comfort

Though the people support the government; the government should not support the people. ~ Grover Cleveland

Yet man is born to love. He is compassionate, just and good. He sheds tears for others and such tears give him pleasure. He invents stories to make him weep. Whence then this furious desire for wars and slaughter? Why does man plunge into the abyss, embracing with passion that which inspires him with such loathing? Why do men who revolt over such trivial issues as attempts to change the calendar allow themselves to be sent like obedient animals to kill and be killed? ~ Isaiah Berlin, The Crooked Timber Of Humanity

There is a bizarre notion according to which it is claimed that because men are corrupt, it is necessary to give certain of them all the more power ... on the contrary, they must be given less power. ~ Benjamin Constant

The intellectual's hostility to the businessman presents no mystery, as the two have, by function, wholly different standards. While the businessman's motto is the customer is always right, the intellectual's task is to preserve his perceived standards against the weight of popular opinion. ~ Bertrand De Jouvenel

I want you to know that this administration is motivated by a political philosophy that sees the greatness of America in you, her people, and in your families, churches, neighborhoods, communities - the institutions that foster and nourish values like concern for others and respect for the rule of law under God. ~ Ronald Reagan

Injuries, therefore, should be inflicted all at once, that their ill savour being less lasting may the less offend; whereas, benefits should be conferred little by little, that so they may be more fully relished. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

There is doubtless such a thing as a 'national character'. In art, it is the lowest common denominator. The more specific the character, the more commonplace it is. That is why creation always requires overcoming such a character.

An artist, if he is anything, is an individual. But to be an individual means embodying your own truths, suffering your own experiences, and inventing your own style. But these things can only occur by renouncing facility, and the most unfortunate facility comes from these so-called national characters, formed by the sedimentation of collective mediocrity, which lies there ready-made. National character is by definition that which remains in a culture after you have removed the personal effort involved in thinking, the personal experience of life and the triumph of individual creation. ~ Mihail Sebastian

As America slept, our constitutional quilt was slowly being unraveled by special interest... I hope you like the cold. ~ A.J. Garces

Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem, government IS the problem. It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant, it's just that they know so much that isn't so. ~ Ronald Reagan

Africans are sub-humans ~ Nguvi McKensey Kazaronda

In short, is American life of the future to be characterized by freedom or by servitude, strength or weakness? The answer must be clear and unequivocal if we are to avoid the pitfalls toward which we are now heading with such certainty. In many respects it is not to be found in any dogma of political philosophy but in those immutable precepts which underlie the Ten Commandments. ~ Douglas MacArthur

Admittedly, I advance some ambitious theories of my own in this book.
But I must stress that I consider them provisional, and I would urge you
to consider whether I might be mistaken. Please, I would ask, consider
that I might be mistaken particularly if my book makes you feel really,
really good inside. Feelings of exactly this type, shared between author
and reader, seem likely to have led the entire discipline of political philosophy
systematically astray for much of its history. Do not trust them. ~ Jason Kuznicki

Regaring Politics: You've got your cats on one side and your dogs on the other; someone has to walk the fence and feed the animals. - Kinky Friedman ~ Ray Palla

No Irish nationalist could support any treaty which institutionalizes British government claims to a part of Irish national territory. Indeed, the term - 'constitutional nationalism'- used by Mr.Mallon (SDLP) and his colleagues to describe their political philosophy is a contradiction in terms. The only constitutional nationalist in Ireland today is Sean McBride. He puts his nationalism within a framework of Irish constitutionality. Mr. Mallon, however, puts his within the framework of British constitutionality. Irish nationalism within British constitutionality is a contradiction in terms. ~ Gerry Adams

Politics and justice seldom walk hand in hand. ~ Wayne Gerard Trotman

The philosophies of one age have become the absurdities of the next, and the foolishness of yesterday has become the wisdom of tomorrow. ~ William Osler

If the caged birds think whoever scattering grains for them that person is their deity,
what should we Kurds call the person who will grantee us an independence. ~ Davan Yahya Khalil

What I have said, and still believe with ever-increasing conviction, is that human society is always,
whether it will or no, aristocratic by its very essence, to the extreme
that it is a society in the measure that it is aristocratic, and ceases to
be such when it ceases to be aristocratic ~ Jose Ortega Y Gasset

When an entire segment of the world is burned and reduced to a lawless battleground for thugs and mercenaries, a land where government does not exist, where the slate of history is being wiped out and hope has drowned in gallons of innocent blood, the only respite comes in the form of the open seas and what lies beyond the horizon. So ships are boarded and pain is tolerated just a little while longer. ~ Aysha Taryam

If you stand for nothing; then you stand alone. ~ Gary A. Honey

The march of invention has clothed mankind with powers of which a century ago the boldest imagination could not have dreamt. ~ Henry George

Sincerity is not part of the political vocabulary. If it is used or implied bells should ring ~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Terry took the silence as acquiescence, "The other way to make money is to exploit people, oh, no sorry, that's the 'only' way to make money, exploit other people, that's how the billionaires have acquired all their money by exploiting others… So how did they achieve it? You're going to love this… they changed all the rules to accommodate what they wanted to do. How I hear you ask… easy, they own the politicians, they own the banks, they own industry and they own everything. They made it easier for themselves to invest in so called emerging markets. What once would've been considered treasonous was now considered virtuous. Instead of building up the nation state and its resources, all of its resources, including its people, they concentrated on building up their profits. That's all they did. They invested in parts of the world where children could be worked for 12 hours a day 7 days a week, where grown men and women could be treated like slaves and all for a pittance and they did this because we here in the west had made it illegal to work children, because we'd abolished slavery, because we had fought for workers' rights, for a minimum wage, for a 40 hr week, for pensions, for the right to retire, for a free NHS, for free education, all of these things were getting in the way of them making a quick and easy profit and worse …had been making us feel we were worth something. ~ Arun D. Ellis

Yet through virtuous living man is further ordained to a higher end, which consists in the enjoyment of God, as we have said above. Consequently, since society must have the same end as the individual man, it is not the ultimate end of an assembled multitude to live virtuously, but through virtuous living to attain to the possession of God. ~ Thomas Aquinas

The education of youth belongs to the priests, yet they do not take so much care of instructing them in letters, as in forming their minds and manners aright; they use all possible methods to infuse, very early, into the tender and flexible minds of children, such opinions as are both good in themselves and will be useful to their country, for when deep impressions of these things are made at that age, they follow men through the whole course of their lives, and conduce much to preserve the peace of the government, which suffers by nothing more than by vices that rise out of ill opinions. ~ Thomas More

Oppression is the seed of power; you will plant it against yourself ~ Kamaran Ihsan Salih

Men are not allowed to think freely about chemistry and biology: why should they be allowed to think freely about political philosophy? ~ Auguste Comte

I sometimes call my new system 'Italian pagan Catholicism,' but it could more accurately be called 'pragmatic liberalism,' with roots in Enlightenment political philosophy. It is a synthesis of the enduring dual elements in our culture, pagan and Judeo-Christian, Romantic and Classic. ~ Camille Paglia

Close the weak banks and impose serious capital requirements on the strong ones ... You see, it may sound hard-hearted, but you cannot keep unsound financial institutions operating simply because they provide jobs. ~ Paul Krugman

But in Utopia, where every man has a right to everything, they all know that if care is taken to keep the public stores full no private man can want anything; for among them there is no unequal distribution, so that no man is poor, none in necessity, and though no man has anything, yet they are all rich; for what can make a man so rich as to lead a serene and cheerful life, free from anxieties; neither apprehending want himself, nor vexed with the endless complaints of his wife? ~ Thomas More

If pride, that plague of human nature, that source of so much misery, did not hinder it; for this vice does not measure happiness so much by its own conveniences, as by the misery of others; and would not be satisfied with being thought a goddess, if none were left that were miserable, over whom she might insult. Pride thinks its own happiness shines the brighter, by comparing it with the misfortunes of other persons; that by displaying its own wealth they may feel their poverty the more sensibly. ~ Thomas More

One way ... in which a political philosophy can be ideological is by presenting a relatively marginal issue as if it were central and essential. ~ Raymond Geuss

I'm a constitutional conservative. I'm a Reagan constitutional conservative. I can think of no three better words to describe my political philosophy. And I will remain a Reagan constitutional conservative. It doesn't matter to what the elites D.C. think in the Republican or the Democratic Party ~ Bobby Jindal

Chet couldn't wipe away his smile. "I have learned much since we parted ways, and one of those lessons is that a static force, even in mass, can be crushed by a dynamic one."

Wellington's face stiffened. "What kind of foolish talk is that?"

"You will find out. On the Fourth of July, as you sit here in your governor's mansion pandering to your public servants - using them to climb into more power, you will learn what it feels like to have everything you believe in shatter before your very eyes."

Wellington shifted irritably in his seat. "What sort of riddle is that, Chet? You and I have been in this political game our entire lives. You know how it works, and that's not going to change. Ever. One party controls the knobs of politics with one hand, and the other party controls the knobs with the other hand. But they are all one body, members of a political ruling class. That's what we do. This isn't anything new."

Chet pushed his brows over his eyes in a gaze that could melt steel. "You will not be able to stop the ramifications of its impact. This thing I'm about to unleash upon you, I'm doing to you because you are an evil man. I used to be, I'll give you that. But I changed, luckily, before death found me. And I will not let you get away with what you are doing to this country."

Wellington was aghast. "So you're involved with terrorism now, are you? What are you going to do?"

Chet shook his head. "The tru ~ Rich Hoffman

If you are a leader or someone who works for the interest of a community, first make sure that you understand the interest of the people who make up that community. In this way, you will have a good chance of minimizing, perhaps, avoiding the us versus them mentality. ~ Duop Chak Wuol

In politics, being deceived is no excuse. ~ Leszek Kołakowski

In the hands of corrupt citizens democracy gives rise to a corrupt nation. ~ Abhijit Naskar

The original Constitution is a dead letter, having suffered decades of legislative, executive and judicial usurpation. The natural- and common law traditions, once loadstars for lawmakers, have been buried under the rubble of legislation and statute. However much one shovels the muck of lawmaking aside, natural justice and the Founders' original intent remain buried too deep to exhume. ~ Ilana Mercer

The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home ~ James Madison

Terrorism has made our world an integrated community in a new and frightening way. Not merely the activities of our neighbors, but those of the inhabitants of the most remote mountain valleys of the farthest-flung countries of our planet, have become our business. We need to extend the reach of the criminal law there and to have the means to bring terrorists to justice without declaring war on an entire country in order to do it. For this we need a sound global system of criminal justice, so justice does not become the victim of national differences of opinion. We also need, though it will be far more difficult to achieve, a sense that we really are one community, that we are people who recognize not only the force of prohibitions against killing each other but also the pull of obligations to assist one another. This may not stop religious fanatics from carrying out suicide missions, but it will help to isolate them and reduce their support. ~ Peter Singer

The purpose of the state is really freedom. ~ Baruch Spinoza

The bigger the government, the more the corruption. It's almost never mentioned, and it might be the biggest of the ten principles that I am speaking of ... Do you know who has created the greatest evils of history? Big governments. Big SECULAR governments. Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, all big States. Why would anybody trust the big state? It's amazing how many callers have imbued the college message that more people have been killed by religion than anything else in history. NO. More people have been killed by governments than anything else in history ... ... .and just in the 20th century alone, and none of them were religious. You don't learn THAT in college. ~ Dennis Prager

A politician lost an argument; he went on a rampage with his fists pointed towards the sky - a move which amounts to a search for a new self. ~ Duop Chak Wuol

Anticipatory obedience is a political tragedy. ~ Timothy Snyder

It may be said with rough accuracy that there are three stages in the life of a strong people. First, it is a small power, and fights small powers. Then it is a great power, and fights great powers. Then it is a great power, and fights small powers, but pretends that they are great powers, in order to rekindle the ashes of its ancient emotion and vanity. After that, the next step is to become a small power itself. ~ G.K. Chesterton

The difference between Nazism and Communism is just the size of the leader's moustache. ~ Adriano Bulla

The real value of democracy comes from unity, equal rights and ethical leadership. If we abide by this value, our community can progress without the rise of civil and economic inequality. ~ Saaif Alam

You don't die when your body stops functioning. You die when your name is uttered for the last time in the world. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Society is purely and solely a continual series of exchanges ... And the greatest eulogy we can give it, for exchange is an admirable transaction, in which two contracting parties always both gain; consequently, society is an uninterrupted succession of advantages, unceasingly renewed for all its members. ~ Antoine Destutt De Tracy

It is not self-forgetting and pain-loving antiquarianism nor self-forgetting and intoxicating romanticism which induces us to turn with passionate interest, with unqualified willingness to learn, toward the political thought of classical antiquity. We are impelled to do so by the crisis of our time, the crisis of the West. ~ Leo Strauss

The average man does not want to be free. he simply wants to be safe. ~ H.L. Mencken

As history has also shown, especially in the twentieth century, one of the first things an ideologue will do after achieving absolute power is kill. ~ Thomas Sowell

Government is the servant, not the master. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Your right of religious freedom ends where my right of religious abstinence begins ... ~ T. Rafael Cimino

An inconsistent political philosophy is that which feeds our battle yet starves our victory. ~ Mike Klepper

The supreme principle of socialism is that man takes precedence over things, life over property, and hence, work over capital; that power follows creation, and not possession; that man must not be governed by circumstances, but circumstances must be governed by man. ~ Erich Fromm

What may be called linear thinking goes straight out from one pole or from one idea of the cosmos of ideas, which every true philosophy is. This idea, cut off from its interrelations and interdependencies with the cosmos,[linear thinking] then fanatically thinks to a finish. Then it becomes radical individualism or socialism or totalitarianism or anarchism. This linear thinking, so characteristic of the modern mind and irs countless -isms, is a stranger to Catholic political philosophy. For Catholic political philosophy is spheric thinking. ~ Heinrich Albert Rommen

The greatest lesson for democracies to learn is for the majority to give to the minority a full, free opportunity to present their side of the case, and then for the minority, having failed to win a majority to their views, gracefully to submit and to recognize the action as that of the entire organization, and cheerfully to assist in carrying it out until they can secure its repeal. ~ Henry Martyn Robert

There is no such thing as liberalism - or progressivism, etc.

There is only conservatism. No other political philosophy actually exists; by the political analogue of Gresham's Law, conservatism has driven every other idea out of circulation.

There might be, and should be, anti-conservatism; but it does not yet exist. What would it be? In order to answer that question, it is necessary and sufficient to characterize conservatism. Fortunately, this can be done very concisely.

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:

There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time.

For millenia, conservatism had no name, because no other model of polity had ever been proposed. "The king can do no wrong." In practice, this immunity was always extended to the king's friends, however fungible a group they might have been. Today, we still have the king's friends even where there is no king (dictator, etc.). Another way to look at this is that the king is a faction, rather than an individual.

As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scr ~ Frank Wilhoit

You are what you do. If you do boring, stupid monotonous work, chances are you'll end up boring, stupid and monotonous. Work is a much better explanation for the creeping cretinization all around us than even such significant moronizing mechanisms as television and education. ~ Bob Black

The adjective "political" in "political philosophy" designates not so much the subject matter as a manner of treatment; from this point of view, I say, "political philosophy" means primarily not the philosophic study of politics, but the political, or popular, treatment of philosophy, or the political introduction to philosophy the attempt to lead qualified citizens, or rather their qualified sons, from the political life to the philosophic life. ~ Leo Strauss

Socialism has never and nowhere been at first a working-class movement. It is by no means an obvious remedy for the obvious evil which the interests of that class will necessarily demand. It is a construction of theorists. ~ Friedrich August Von Hayek

Civic virtue is not best justified in terms of fair play in a cooperative enterprise for mutual advantage, because citizenship is not a strictly reciprocal relationship in which people receive benefits in proportion to their contributions, but a joint relationship that realises the common good of freedom and self-government. ~ Iseult Honohan

We have the tools, but we have to learn how to use them. That is my political philosophy. ~ Harri Holkeri

Our faith in democracy, personal freedoms and human 'rights', and the other comforting prescriptions of the humanist liberal credo stem from the supremacy of maritime over territorial power. Pragmatists may deplore this as crude determinism, as another vain attempt to construct a general theory of history. They should reflect on the sort of political philosophy and structures we might now adhere to had the Habsburgs, Bourbons, Bonaparte, Hitler, Stalin or his heirs prevailed in the titanic world struggles of the past four centuries. ~ Peter Padfield

What must never be lost sight of is that a public functionary, in his capacity as functionary, produces absolutely nothing; that, on the contrary, he exists only on the products of the industrious class; and that he can consume nothing that has not been taken from the producers. ~ Charles Dunoyer

An oppressor mob is far more dangerous than an oppressor tyrant. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Government does not create wealth; it redistributes it. Whatever it gives you it must first take from someone else. ~ Robert W. McGee

The world needs heroes. Be a hero and build your part of the world. ~ Abhijit Naskar

The difference between a dictator and a true leader, is in intention. Given enough resources anybody can manipulate the minds of the masses and become their chosen authority, for the masses rarely look past the veil of the candidate's charm. And this is more evident today than ever, as a psychologically unfit misogynistic bully has swayed his way into the oval office with nothing but charm and charisma. So, basically we live in a society where a bully can become the authority of a great nation, the history of which is filled with true leaders who were the forerunners of humanitarian glory and real progress - these leaders were not simply the leaders of a country, or a party, but they were and still remain in the heart of the civilized humans as the leaders of humanity. They were the torch-bearers of egalitarianism and their light spread across the globe and touched countless lives with the warmth of humaneness. They lived among the masses but they didn't let the prejudices of the masses become their own, let alone infect the masses with more prejudices, unlike today's so-called leadership in America. They made America truly a great nation, by turning it into a symbol of liberty and acceptance, and today that very greatness is at stake, as the primitive evils of prejudices and discriminations have once again begun to creep into its backbone, through the words and actions of its very so-called leader. This is not a threat to democracy, for democracy itself at our current evolut ~ Abhijit Naskar

The conception of human rights based upon the assumed existence of a human being as such broke down at the very moment when those who professed to believe in it were for the first time confronted with people who had indeed lost all other qualities and specific relationships except that they were still human. The world found nothing sacred in the abstract nakedness of being human. ~ Hannah Arendt

The first issue to be settled is whether socialism has a right to exist Are its allegations concerning the present system true? Is industry proceeding on a principle of fraud? I wish to test the power of recent economic theory to give an exact answer to this question. ~ John Bates Clark

Politics, it's all corrupt! ~ Steven Magee

In the political/geopolitical news segment - one who pays someone to create content has a hidden agenda, and one who likes to get paid for the content creation has a vested interest. ~ Rahul Guhathakurta

A politician will promise the moon but deliver an ant hill ~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

JFK apparently felt genuine sympathy for his 1960 presidential opponent Richard Nixon. He felt that, with Nixon's frequent shifts in political philosophy and reinventions, he must have to decide which Nixon he will be at each stop. This, Kennedy reasoned, must be exhausting. ~ David Pietrusza

I am firmly convinced that we must never judge political movements by their aims, no matter how loudly proclaimed or how sincerely upheld, but only by the means they use to realize these aims. ~ Werner Heisenberg

If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Now, at this very minute, a political philosophy foreign to it is being pressed on the South, and the South's not ready for it - we're finding ourselves in the same deep waters. As sure as time, history is repeating itself, and as sure as man is man, history is the last place he'll look for his lessons. I hope to God it'll be a comparatively bloodless Reconstruction this time. ~ Harper Lee

The hope that poverty and ignorance may gradually be extinguished, derives indeed much support from the steady progress of the working classes during the nineteenth century. ~ Alfred Marshall

While you're governing the colony and I'm writing political philosophy, They'll never guess that in the darkness of night we sneak into each other's room and play checkers and have pillow fights. ~ Orson Scott Card

Alternative facts and fake news are just other names for propaganda ~ Johnny Corn

The neoconservative pseudo-conservatives speak like Tocqueville but act like Robespierre. ~ Ilana Mercer

The political philosophy of black nationalism means that the black man should control the politics and the politicians in his own community; no more. ~ Malcolm X

Man is the only animal whose desires increase as they are fed; the only animal that is never satisfied. ~ Henry George

A mother was thinking of how to keep her naughty child in line she tried using the boogey man it didn't work ... she thought and thought then said "the Politician is going to get you" and he was never naughty again ~ Rassool Jibraeel Snyman

Geography should be the ultimate deciding factor for every political dilemma for proximity to an ailing land is bound to result in one's infection. ~ Aysha Taryam

To sum up: politically speaking, it is insufficient to say that power and violence are not the same. Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. ~ Hannah Arendt

I would rather be governed by the first 2000 people in the Manhattan phone book than the entire faculty of Harvard. ~ William F. Buckley, Jr.

The most wounding insult to an educated Russian was to be called nekulturny-uncultured-yet the same men who sat in the gilt boxes at the Moscow State Opera weeping at the end of a performance of Boris Gudunov could immediately turn around and order the execution or imprisonment of a hundred men without blinking. A strange people, made more strange by their political philosophy. ~ Tom Clancy

We and future generations should never forget them, Always remember them. ~ Davan Yahya Khalil

Libertarians secretly worried that ultimately someone will figure out the whole of their political philosophy boils down to 'get off my property.' News flash: This is not really a big secret to the rest of us. ~ John Scalzi

Every politician brings in a wide range of context, promises and characters to bring his mission of you to listen to his words and vote for him and later he won't listen to you at any range. ~ Auliq Ice

We try to show that the well-ordered society of justice as fairness is indeed possible according to our nature and those requirements. This endeavor belongs to political philosophy as reconciliation; for seeing that the conditions of a social world at least allow for that possibility affects our view of the world itself and our attitude toward it. No longer need it seem hopelessly hostile, a world in which the will to dominate and oppressive cruelties, abetted by prejudice and folly, must inevitably prevail. None of these may ease our loss, situated as we may be in a corrupt society. But we may reflect that the world is not in itself inhospitable to political justice and its good. Our social world might have been different and there is hope for those at another time and place ~ John Rawls