Carl Schmitt Quotes
Carl Schmitt was a German jurist and political theorist, one of the most influential and most compromised legal thinkers of the twentieth century. His Political Theology, The Concept of the Political, and The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, written in the late 1920s and early 1930s, set out a decisionist account of sovereignty, the friend-enemy distinction as the criterion of the political, and a sharp critique of liberal constitutionalism. The quotes below are attributed to Carl Schmitt, organized by topic.
Carl Schmitt on Politics
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Attributed to Carl Schmitt:
“Sovereign is he who decides on the exception.”
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Attributed to Carl Schmitt:
“The political is the distinction between friend and enemy.”
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Attributed to Carl Schmitt:
“All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts.”
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Attributed to Carl Schmitt:
“Every political concept is a polemical concept.”
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Attributed to Carl Schmitt:
“Where there is a real enemy, there is a real politics.”