Political Philosophy Quotes

Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.

~ Ronald Reagan

If our Founding Fathers wanted us to care about the rest of the world, they wouldn't have declared their independence from it.

~ Stephen Colbert

I hold strongly to this: that it is better to be impetuous than circumspect, because fortune is a woman and if she is to be submissive it is necessary to beat and coerce her.

~ Niccolò Machiavelli

Is it better to be loved or feared?

~ Niccolò Machiavelli

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

Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of production and trade...

~ Ayn Rand

The real enemy is the totality of physical and mental constraints by which capital, or class society, or statism, or the society of the spectacle expropriates everyday life, the time of our lives. The real enemy is not an object apart from life. It is the organization of life by powers detached from it and turned against it. The apparatus, not its personnel, is the real enemy. But it is by and through the apparatchiks and everyone else participating in the system that domination and deception are made manifest. The totality is the organization of all against each and each against all. It includes all the policemen, all the social workers, all the office workers, all the nuns, all the op-ed columnists, all the drug kingpins from Medellin to Upjohn, all the syndicalists and all the situationists.

~ Bob Black

Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression...

~ John Stuart Mill

religion, the most powerful of the elements which have entered into the formation of moral feeling, having almost always been governed either by the ambition of a hierarchy, seeking control over every department of human conduct, or by the spirit of Puritanism.

~ John Stuart Mill

In essence I find that the foundation of modern conservatism is driven by a clinging to God in fear of the world, whereas the foundation of modern liberalism is a clinging to the world in fear of God; albeit, the true foundation should be one's clinging to God in fear of God.

~ Criss Jami

YOU ARE JUSTYou are not just for the right or left,but for what is right over the wrong.You are not just rich or poor,but always wealthy in the mind and heart.You are not perfect, but flawed.You are flawed, but you are just.You may just be conscious human,but you are also a magnificentreflection of God.

~ Suzy Kassem

It can be difficult to speak truth to power. Circumstances, however, have made doing so increasingly necessary.

~ Aberjhani

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

The job facing American voters… in the days and years to come is to determine which hearts, minds and souls command those qualities best suited to unify a country rather than further divide it, to heal the wounds of a nation as opposed to aggravate its injuries, and to secure for the next generation a legacy of choices based on informed awareness rather than one of reactions based on unknowing fear.

~ Aberjhani

Tell me,' asked Stas, 'what is a wicked deed?' 'If anyone takes away Kali's cow,' he answered after a brief reflection, 'that then is a wicked deed.' 'Excellent!' exclaimed Stas, 'and what is a good one?' This time the answer came without any reflection: 'If Kali takes away the cow of somebody else, that is a good deed.' Stas was too young to perceive that similar views of evil and good deeds were enunciated in Europe not only by politicians but by whole nations.

~ Henryk Sienkiewicz

Never mind the mistakes. One day they will become your most prized possessions.

~ Abhijit Naskar

Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Most schooling is training for stupidity and conformity, and that's institutional, but occasionally you get a spark, somebody'll challenge your mind, make you think and so on, and that has a tremendous effect you just reach all sorts of people. Of course if you do it you may very have problems, you have to tread the narrow line. There are plenty of people who don't want students to think, they're afraid of the crisis of democracy. If people start thinking you get all these problems that I quoted before. They won't have enough humility to submit to a civil rule or they'll start trying to press their demands in the political arena and have ideas of their own, instead of beleiving what they're told. And privelage and power typically doesn't want that and so they react and the high school teacher that tries to get students to think may find oppression, firing and so on.

~ Noam Chomsky

If the surprise outcome of the recent UK referendum - on whether to leave or remain in the European Union - teaches us anything, it is that supposedly worthy displays of democracy in action can actually do more harm than good. Witness a nation now more divided; an intergenerational schism in the making; both a governing and opposition party torn to shreds from the inside; infinitely more complex issues raised than satisfactory solutions provided. It begs the question 'Was it really all worth it' ?

~ Alex Morritt

Constructively challenging authority requires the basic habits of mind a liberal education seeks to instill: the ability to frame the essential questions; to think critically, analytically, and ethically about the problems those questions identify; and to respond effectively, creatively, and wisely to the implications of the analysis. It requires not only an ability to appreciate the complexity of a problem but also to identify its essence in order to achieve effective, just, and fair conclusions.

~ Gregory S. Prince

Some days of my vagabond life I read Arthur Schopenhauer and others Friedrich Nietzsche. I was a humble learner – an empty vessel - at the feet of the legends of human history. I was a seeker of truth, travelling through time while quenching my thirst for knowledge. And a humble learner of today becomes a strong leader of tomorrow.

~ Abhijit Naskar

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

~ A.j. Garces

Fear, that’s the great motivator though. Fear keeps it all in check. Fear of one’s neighbor. Fear of those who don’t look like you. Fear of those who live in some barren desert halfway across the globe,” Sean continued. “Domestic terrorism, just as much as fear of those abroad has helped people accept more intrusion into their everyday lives. To accept less freedom as freedom itself.

~ Jordon Greene

Ineffective leadership, is the plight of followers who anoint power to the autocratic persons who's visions are not founded but are rather arbitrary in their nature.

~ Wayne Chirisa

The IGAD-Plus's compromise peace agreement is probably pregnant with a noisy, perhaps thunderous baby.

~ Duop Chak Wuol

The fundamental basis of this nation’s laws was given to Moses on the Mount…If we don’t have a proper fundamental moral background, we will finally end up with a totalitarian government which does not believe in rights for anybody except the State.

~ Harry Truman

Don't ask me to pray, instead ask me to act.

~ Moonshine Noire

The illusion of free will, of freedom, is a useful tool you know. Let people think they are free and present them with a danger to their so-called freedom, a fear. It’s amazing how much you can get them to deal with just as long as you tell them they’re still free.

~ Jordon Greene

Let no one ever intimidate you, you are standing on no one's ground. But again, some have claimed the earth as their own and usurped power from the rest of us. But they are usurpers; power belongs to every one of us. Seek it as much as possible. There is no shame in that. In fact it's a necessity. Either you have power or you are trampled to death in the stampede to get to the top

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

The purpose of the state is really freedom.

~ Baruch Spinoza

When national ideals are confined to insignificant issues reflective primarily of a personal choice, there lies a problem of distorted priorities.

~ Moutasem Algharati

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.

~ Thomas Jefferson

As government expands, liberty contracts.

~ Ronald Reagan

I am increasingly persuaded that the earth belongs exclusively to the living and that one generation has no more right to bind another to it's laws and judgments than one independent nation has the right to command another.

~ Thomas Jefferson

Sovereign is he who decides on the exception.

~ Carl Schmitt

Many laws as certainly make bad men, as bad men make many laws.

~ Walter Savage Landor

Politics is clueless; I can claim -I am a politician only because I am not.

~ Munia Khan

All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts not only because of their historical development - in which they were transferred from theology to the theory of the state, whereby, for example, the omnipotent god became the omnipotent lawgiver - but also because of their systematic structure, the recognition of which is necessary for a sociological consideration of these concepts. The exception in jurisprudence is analogous to the miracle in theology. Only by being aware of this analogy can we appreciate the manner in which the philosophical ideas of the state developed in the last centuries.

~ Carl Schmitt

The women of the world will dominate politics, some day, and you mustn't be too old-fashioned in your notions to join the procession of progress.

~ L. Frank Baum

I would rather contend with an honest asshole than a duplicitous diplomat.

~ A.e. Samaan

Political Philosophy Quotes

Political Philosophy quote from classy quote