Politics Quotes

“Their [realists'] concern is that utopian aspirations towards a new peaceful world order will simply absolutize conflicts and make them more intractable. National interests are in some degree negotiable; rights, in principle, are not. International organizations such as the United Nations have not been conspicuously successful in bringing peace, and it is likely that the states of the world would become extremely nervous of any move to give the UN the overwhelming power needed to do this.”
― Kenneth Minogue, Politics: A Very Short Introduction

“It is said that the price of freedom is vigilance, and an important form of vigilance is attention to political rhetoric, which often reveals how things are going.”
― Kenneth Minogue, Politics: A Very Short Introduction

“At the turn of the twentieth century, the first wave of academic political scientists attacked some of their theoretical predecessors for the supposed mistake of assuming that human beings were entirely rational. This mistake had allegedly been made by politicians and theorists who had tried to appeal to voters in terms of purely rational argument. The new political scientists triumphantly pointed out that image, stereotype, the emotions arising in crowds, family background, and many other irrational factors were actually the main determinants of political behaviour.”
― Kenneth Minogue, Politics: A Very Short Introduction

“As Hobbes remarked, in war, force and fraud are the cardinal virtues, and he regarded international relations as always potentially a condition of war. Cavour, one of the creators of a united Italy in the nineteenth century, is reported as remarking: ‘What scoundrels we would be if we had done for ourselves what we have done for our country.”
― Kenneth Minogue, Politics: A Very Short Introduction

“Europeans have sometimes been beguiled by a despotism that comes concealed in the seductive form of an ideal – as it did in the cases of Hitler and Stalin. This fact may remind us that the possibility of despotism is remote neither in space nor in time.”
― Kenneth Minogue, Politics: A Very Short Introduction

“Dynasties rise and fall according to what the Chinese used to call ‘the mandate of heaven’, but life for the peasant changes little.”
― Kenneth Minogue, Politics: A Very Short Introduction

“Politics is the activity by which the framework of human life is sustained; it is not life itself.”
― Kenneth Minogue, Politics: A Very Short Introduction

“What are kingdoms without justice, but great robberies? asked St Augustine”
― Kenneth Minogue, Politics: A Very Short Introduction

“It is very seldom that events stand still for long, and the paradox is that the past is nearly as opaque as the future.”
― Kenneth Minogue, Politics: A Very Short Introduction

“Science turns whatever it studies into a natural process which is not affected by thinking, because thought is the capacity to construe the world in a variety of ways, and how human beings act depends on these unpredictable constructions. Human conduct thus lacks even the regularity found in the natural world.”
― Kenneth Minogue, Politics: A Very Short Introduction

“What is merely desired has no intellectual force, whereas what is desirable moves the argument on to an objective plane beyond desire.”
― Kenneth Minogue, Politics: A Very Short Introduction

“In our time’, Thomas Mann remarked, ‘the destiny of man presents its meaning in political terms.”
― Kenneth Minogue, Politics: A Very Short Introduction

“He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.”
― Kenneth Minogue, Politics: A Very Short Introduction

“The secret of politics is to care about success, but not too much.”
― Kenneth Minogue, Politics: A Very Short Introduction