Bernard Crick Quotes
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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.
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If, of course, one builds into the concept of an 'individual' all that Professor Hayek does in his Road To Serfdom, Individualism and Economic Order and many other works, which is, to put it briefly, the whole of laisser-faire economic theory, then plainly man as such a programmed predator has very little interest in being fraternal, or very little chance.
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The agony of international relations is the need to try to practice politics without the basic conditions for political order.
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The idea of a rational bureaucracy, of skill, merit, and consistency, is essential to all modern states.
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Totalitarian rule marks the sharpest contrast imaginable with political rule, and ideological thinking is an explicit and direct challenge to political thinking.
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The praise of free men is worth having, for it is the only praise which is free from either servility or condescension.
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Totalitarianism surpasses autocracy.
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What matters in Politics is what men actually do - sincerity is no excuse for acting unpolitically, and insincerity may be channelled by politics into good results.
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The method of rule of the tyrant and the oligarch is quite simply to clobber, coerce, or overawe all or most other groups in the interest of their own.
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Democracy is perhaps the most promiscuous word in the world of public affairs.
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Free men stick their necks out.
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Too often the revolutionary is the man who must create order in the chaos left by failed conservatives.
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Factory workers are not working for capitalism, they are working for a living wage.
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Politics is a way of ruling in divided societies without undue violence...politics is not just a necessary evil; it is a realistic good.
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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.
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Politics deserves much praise. Politics is a preoccupation of free men, and its existence is a test of freedom. The praise of free men is worth having, for it is the only praise which is free from either servility or condescension.
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Quite apart from the prestige of technology, people do, after all, prefer a simple idea to a complex one.
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To Marx the claim of the theory of ideology is that all doctrine is a derivative of social circumstance.
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Where government is impossible, politics is impossible.
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There is no great danger to politics in the desire for certainty at any price.
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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.
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Politics has rough manners, but it is a very useful thing.
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In an abstract but real sense, Marxism arose through the breakdown first of religion and then of 'reason' as single sources of authority.
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The politician has no more use for pride than Falstaff had for honour.