Philosopher Quotes on Politics

“Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent.”

On Violence

“The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.”

The New Yorker (12 September 1970)

“On scientific discovery, in Between Past and Future (1961) as quoted in Ideas in literature: Ten things Hannah Arendt said that are eerily relevant in today’s political times (4 December 2017)”

It is, I think, safe to say that nothing was more alien to the minds of the scientists, who brought about the most radical and most rapid revolutionary process the world has ever seen, than any will to power. Nothing was more remote than any wish to ‘conquer space’ and to go to the moon. It was indeed their search for ‘true reality’ that led them to lose confidence in appearances, in the phenomena

“Political questions are far too serious to be left to the politicians.”

Men in Dark Times (1968)

“In a head-on clash between violence and power , the outcome is hardly in doubt. Nowhere is the self-defeating factor in the victory of violence over power more evident than in the use of terror to maintain domination, about whose weird successes and eventual failures we know perhaps more than any generation before us. Violence can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating it.”

On Violence (1970)

“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.”

Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretirt; es kommt aber darauf an, sie zu verändern.

“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-ope

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”

As quoted in The Communist Manifesto (1848), p.2

“Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour.”

Vol. I, Ch. 10, Section 1, p. 257.

“All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.”

The Communist Manifesto, 1848

“It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.”

I say that every prince must desire to be considered merciful and not cruel. He must, however, take care not to misuse this mercifulness. ... A prince, therefore, must not mind incurring the charge of cruelty for the purpose of keeping his subjects united and confident; for, with a very few examples, he will be more merciful than those who, from excess of tenderness, allow disorders to arise, from

“Princes who have done great deeds have held their good faith of little account.”

How laudable it is for a prince to keep good faith and live with integrity, and not with astuteness, every one knows. Still the experience of our times shows those princes to have done great things who have had little regard for good faith, and have been able by astuteness to confuse men's brains, and who have ultimately overcome those who have made loyalty their foundation. You must know, then, t

“The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.”

A variant translation of: "And the first opinion which one forms of a prince, and of his understanding, is by observing the men he has around him." - The Prince (1513), Ch. 22

Attributed to Niccolo Machiavelli:

“Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.”

Attributed to Niccolo Machiavelli:

“Men are so simple of mind, and so much dominated by their immediate needs, that a deceitful man will always find plenty who are ready to be deceived.”

“The war of all against all.”

The First Part, Chapter 13, p. 62

“Covenants without the sword are but words, and of no strength to secure a man at all.”

The Second Part, Chapter 17, p. 85

“The condition of man is a condition of war of every one against every one.”

The First Part, Chapter 14, p. 64

“He that is to govern a whole nation must read in himself, not this or that particular man, but mankind.”

The Introduction, p. 2

“Such truth as opposes no man's profit, nor pleasure, is to all men welcome.”

Review and Conclusion, p. 396, (Last text line)

“The state is not abolished, it withers away.”

Anti-Dühring , pt. 3, ch. 2 (1877)

“For I am of the opinion... that the reconquest of the German speaking left bank of the Rhine is a matter of national honour, and that the Germanisation of a disloyal Holland and of Belgium is a political necessity for us. Shall we let the German nationality be completely suppressed in these countries, while the Slavs are rising ever more powerfully in the East?”

Written under the pseudonym of Friedrich Oswald, “Telegraph für Deutschland”, Telegraph für Deutschland , Nos. 2-5, (January 1841)

“How do you think the transition from the present situation to community of Property is to be effected? The first, fundamental condition for the introduction of community of property is the political liberation of the proletariat through a democratic constitution .”

Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith (1847)

“The Austrian Germans and Magyars will be set free and wreak a bloody revenge on the Slav barbarians . The general war which will then break out will smash this Slav Sonderbund and wipe out all these petty hidebound nations, down to their very names. The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of reactionary classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too, is a step forward.”

The Magyar Struggle in Neue Rheinische Zeitung (13 January 1849) | Referring to the Serb uprising of 1848–49 , in which Serbs from Vojvodina fought against the previously victorious Hungarian revolution .

Attributed to Friedrich Engels:

“All history has been a history of class struggles.”

“Maybe the target nowadays is not to discover what we are, but to refuse what we are.”

p. 785

“We should admit rather that power produces knowledge (and not simply by encouraging it because it serves power or by applying it because it is useful); that power and knowledge directly imply one another.”

Michel Foucault, quoted in Subrata Chattopadhyay Banerjee - The Development of Aryan Invasion Theory in India, A Critique of Nineteenth-Century Social Constructionism-Springer (2020)

“As quoted by David Macey , The lives of Michel Foucault (1993) p. 177. Citing 'Les Intellectuels et le Pouvoir', Le'Arc 49, 1972, pp. 3-10. Discussion with Gilles Deleuze, (4 March 1972). Reprinted, Le Nouvel Observateur , (8 May 1972) pp. 68-70. Tr. 'Intellectuals and Power', Language, Counter-Memory, Practice , pp. 205-17.”

Marxism exists in nineteenth-century thought as a fish exists in water; that is, it ceases to breathe anywhere else.

“Power, Moral Values, and the Intellectual", interview in History of the Present 4 (Spring 1988)”

Sometimes, because my position has not been made clear enough, people think I'm a sort of radical anarchist who has an absolute hatred of power. No! What I am trying to do is to approach this extremely important and tangled phenomenon in our society, the exercise of power, with the most reflective, and I would say prudent attitude. Prudent in my analysis, in the moral and theoretical postulates I

Attributed to Michel Foucault:

“Where there is power, there is resistance.”

“All for ourselves and nothing for other people seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.”

Chapter IV, p. 448.

“Defence is of much more importance than opulence.”

Chapter II

“No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.”

Chapter VIII, p. 94.

“I perfectly agree with your Lordship too, that to crush the Industry of so great and so fine a province of the empire, in order to favour the monopoly of some particular towns in Scotland or England, is equally unjust and impolitic. The general opulence and improvement of Ireland might certainly, under proper management, afford much greater resources to the Government, than can ever be drawn from a few mercantile or manufacturing towns.”

Letter to Henry Dundas (1 November 1779), quoted in Adam Smith, The Correspondence of Adam Smith , eds. E. C. Mossner and I. S. Ross (1987), p. 241

Attributed to Adam Smith:

“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”

“A leftist government doesn't exist because being on the left has nothing to do with governments.”

from L'Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze: G comme Gauche (“Gilles Deleuze's Alphabet Book: Left-wing Politics”), 1988–1989.

“from L'Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze: G comme Gauche (“Gilles Deleuze's Alphabet Book: Left-wing Politics”), 1988–1989.”

A leftist government doesn't exist because being on the left has nothing to do with governments.

“Instead of gambling on the eternal impossibility of the revolution and on the fascist return of a war-machine in general, why not think that a new type of revolution is in the course of becoming possible , and that all kinds of mutating, living machines conduct wars, are combined and trace out a plane of consistence which undermines the plane of organization of the World and the States?”

from Dialogues with Claire Parnet, p. 147 [emphasis in original].

“A book is a small cog in a much more complex, external machinery. Writing is a flow among others; it enjoys no special privilege and enters into relationships of current and counter-current, of back-wash with other flows — the flows of shit, sperm, speech, action, eroticism, money, politics, etc. Like Bloom, writing on the sand with one hand and masturbating with the other — two flows in what relationship?”

from I have Nothing to Admit

Attributed to Gilles Deleuze:

“We do not lack communication. On the contrary, we have too much of it. We lack creation. We lack resistance to the present.”

“…if we intend to pursue the history of our species in its further attainments, we may soon enter on subjects which will confine our observation to more narrow limits. The genius of political wisdom and civil arts appears to have chosen his seats in particular tracts of the earth, and to have selected his favourites in particular races of men.”

PART III, SECTION I.

Attributed to Adam Ferguson:

“Mankind, in following the present sense of their minds, in striving to remove inconveniencies, or to gain apparent and contiguous advantages, arrive at ends which even their imagination could not anticipate.”

Attributed to Adam Ferguson:

“Society is more than a mere convenience; it is the natural element in which our faculties most truly develop.”

Attributed to Adam Ferguson:

“If nations actually borrow from their neighbours, they probably borrow only what they are nearly in a condition to have invented themselves.”

Attributed to Adam Ferguson:

“The boasted refinements of polished ages are not divested of danger.”

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

When bad men combine , the good must associate ; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle . It is not enough in a situation of trust in the commonwealth, that a man means well to his country ; it is not enough that in his single person he never did an evil act , but always voted according to his conscience , and even harangued against every design which he a

“People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.”

Volume iii, p. 274

“Justice was in all countries originally administered by the priesthood; nor indeed could laws in their first feeble state have either authority or sanction, so as to compel men to relinquish their natural independence, had they not appeared to come down to them enforced by beings of more than human power. The first openings of civility have been everywhere made by religion. Amongst the Romans, the custody and interpretation of the laws continued solely in the college of the pontiffs for above a century.”

An Essay towards an Abridgment of English History (1757– c . 1763), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI (1856), p. 196

“In the interval between his campaigns Agricola was employed in the great labours of peace. He knew that the general must be perfected by the legislator; and that the conquest is neither permanent nor honourable, which is only an introduction to tyranny... In short, he subdued the Britons by civilizing them; and made them exchange a savage liberty for a polite and easy subjection. His conduct is the most perfect model for those employed in the unhappy, but sometimes necessary, task of subduing a rude and free people.”

An Essay towards an Abridgment of English History (1757– c . 1763), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI (1856), p. 215

“War ," says Machiavel , "ought to be the only study of a prince;" and by a prince he means every sort of state, however constituted. "He ought," says this great political doctor, "to consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes ability to execute military plans." A meditation on the conduct of political societies made old Hobbes imagine that war was the state of nature.”

Wikiquote

“To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture.”

pp. 38

Attributed to Frantz Fanon:

“Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it.”

Attributed to Frantz Fanon:

“Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well.”

Attributed to Frantz Fanon:

“The colonized man finds his freedom in and through violence.”

Attributed to Frantz Fanon:

“What matters now is not to know the world but to change it.”

“Wielding Power", in Han Feizi: Basic Writings (2003)”

When all within the four seas have been put in their proper places, [the sage] sits in darkness to observe the light. When those to his left and right have taken their places, he opens the gate to face the world. He changes nothing, alters nothing, but acts with the two handles of reward and punishment, acts and never ceases: this is what is called walking the path of principle.

“No state is forever strong or forever weak . If those who uphold the law are strong, the state will be strong; if they are weak, the state will be weak.”

國無常強，無常弱。奉法者強則國強，奉法者弱則國弱。 | On Having Standards", in Han Feizi: Basic Writings (2003)

“A truly enlightened ruler uses the law to select men for him; he does not choose them himself. He uses the law to weigh their merits; he does not attempt to judge them for himself.”

On Having Standards", in Han Feizi: Basic Writings (2003)

Attributed to Han Feizi:

“When the ruler relies on his own intelligence and discards laws, even his ablest ministers will fail him.”

Attributed to Han Feizi:

“The enlightened ruler does not need the worthy or the wise; he relies on law.”

“The slaves of developed industrial civilisation are sublimated slaves, but they are slaves.”

p. 32

“Bourgeois political economy … never gets to see man who is its real subject. It disregards the essence of man and his history and is thus in the profoundest sense not a ‘ science of people’ but of non-people and of an inhuman world of objects and commodities .”

The Foundations of Historical Materialism,” Studies in Critical Philosophy (1972), p. 9

“As the German idealists saw it, the French Revolution not only abolished feudal absolutism , replacing it with the economic and political system of the middle class , but it completed what the German Reformation had begun, emancipating the individual as a self-reliant master of his life. p. 3”

Wikiquote

Attributed to Herbert Marcuse:

“Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.”

Attributed to Herbert Marcuse:

“The people recognise themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment.”

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”

We but mirror the world . All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body . If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change.

“Address given in Bombay (26 September 1896), Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi , Vol. 1, p. 410 (Electronic Book), New Delhi, Publications Division Government of India, 1999, 98 volumes.”

Ours is one continual struggle against a degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans , who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and, then, pass his life in indolence and nakedness.

“You say that the magistrate's decision is unsatisfactory because it would enable a person , however unclean, to travel by a tram, and that even the Kaffirs would be able to do so. But the magistrate's decision is quite different. The Court declared that the Kaffirs have no legal right to travel by tram. And according to tram regulations, those in an unclean dress or in a drunken state are prohibited from boarding a tram. Thanks to the Court's decision, only clean Indians or coloured people other than Kaffirs, can now travel in the trams.”

Comments on a court case in The Indian Opinion (2 June 1906)

Attributed to Mahatma Gandhi:

“An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.”

Attributed to Mahatma Gandhi:

“Nonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind.”

“Every morning I shall concern myself anew about the boundary Between the love - deed -Yes and the power -deed-No And pressing forward honor reality . We cannot avoid Using power, Cannot escape the compulsion To afflict the world , So let us, cautious in diction And mighty in contradiction , Love powerfully.”

Power and Love" (1926)

“Power and Love" (1926)”

Every morning I shall concern myself anew about the boundary Between the love - deed -Yes and the power -deed-No And pressing forward honor reality . We cannot avoid Using power, Cannot escape the compulsion To afflict the world , So let us, cautious in diction And mighty in contradiction , Love powerfully.

“Politics and Morality" in Be'ayot (April 1945), as published in A Land of Two Peoples : Martin Buber on Jews and Arabs (1983) edited by Paul Mendes-Flohr, p. 169”

Life , in that it is life, necessarily entails justice .

“To win a truly great life for the people of Israel , a great peace is necessary, not a fictitious peace, the dwarfish peace that is no more than a feeble intermission, but a true peace with the neighboring peoples, which alone can render possible a common development of this portion of the earth as the vanguard of the awakening Near East.”

Our Reply" (September 1945), as published in A Land of Two Peoples : Martin Buber on Jews and Arabs (1983) edited by Paul Mendes-Flohr, p. 178 | Variant translation: Only a true peace with neighboring peoples can render possible a common development of this portion of the earth as a vanguard of the awakening of the Near East.

“Variant translation: Only a true peace with neighboring peoples can render possible a common development of this portion of the earth as a vanguard of the awakening of the Near East.”

To win a truly great life for the people of Israel , a great peace is necessary, not a fictitious peace, the dwarfish peace that is no more than a feeble intermission, but a true peace with the neighboring peoples, which alone can render possible a common development of this portion of the earth as the vanguard of the awakening Near East.

“Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.”

Book XXIX: Of the Manner of Composing Laws, Chapter 16: Things to be Observed in the Composing of Laws

“The laws of Rome had wisely divided public power among a large number of magistracies, which supported, checked and tempered each other. Since they all had only limited power, every citizen was qualified for them, and the people — seeing many persons pass before them one after the other — did not grow accustomed to any in particular. But in these times the system of the republic changed. Through the people the most powerful men gave themselves extraordinary commissions — which destroyed the authority of the people and magistrates, and placed all great matters in the hands of one man, or a few.”

Chapter XI. [ 1 ] [ 2 ]

Attributed to Montesquieu:

“Liberty is the right to do what the laws permit.”

Attributed to Montesquieu:

“There is no nation so powerful as the one that obeys its laws.”

Attributed to Montesquieu:

“The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.”

“If everyone in the world will love universally, states not attacking one another and houses not disturbing one another, would this be a calamity?”

Book 4; Universal Love I

“If one does not preserve the learned in a state he will be injuring the state ; if one is not zealous (to recommend) the virtuous upon seeing one, he will be neglecting the ruler. Enthusiasm is to be shown only to the virtuous, and plans for the country are only to be shared with the learned. Few are those, who, neglecting the virtuous and slighting the learned, could still maintain the existence of their countries.”

Book 1; Befriending the Learned | Variant translation: To enter upon rulership of a country but not preserve its scholars will result in the downfall of the country. To see the worthy but not hasten to them will make the country's ruler less able to perform his duties. To the unworthy is due no attention. The ignorant should remain without inclusion in the state's affairs. To impede the virtuous a

“Variant translation: To enter upon rulership of a country but not preserve its scholars will result in the downfall of the country. To see the worthy but not hasten to them will make the country's ruler less able to perform his duties. To the unworthy is due no attention. The ignorant should remain without inclusion in the state's affairs. To impede the virtuous and neglect the scholarly and still maintain the survival of the state has yet to be, indeed.”

If one does not preserve the learned in a state he will be injuring the state ; if one is not zealous (to recommend) the virtuous upon seeing one, he will be neglecting the ruler. Enthusiasm is to be shown only to the virtuous, and plans for the country are only to be shared with the learned. Few are those, who, neglecting the virtuous and slighting the learned, could still maintain the existence

Attributed to Mozi:

“Universal love and mutual benefit produce order; partial love and mutual hatred produce disorder.”

Attributed to Mozi:

“When everyone regards the states of others as he regards his own, who will attack the others?”

“Liberty, taking the word in its concrete sense, consists in the ability to choose.”

Ch. 3, Liberty

“The Pre-War Notebook (1933-1939), published in First and Last Notebooks (1970) edited by Richard Rees”

Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts : to construct and to refrain from destruction .

“The prospects of revolution seem therefore quite restricted. For can a revolution avoid war ? It is, however, on this feeble chance that we must stake everything or abandon all hope . An advanced country will not encounter, in the case of revolution, the difficulties which in backward Russia served as a base for the barbarous regime of Stalin . But a war of any scope will give rise to others as formidable.”

Reflections on War" (1933); also in Formative Writings (2009)

“Reflections on War" (1933); also in Formative Writings (2009)”

The prospects of revolution seem therefore quite restricted. For can a revolution avoid war ? It is, however, on this feeble chance that we must stake everything or abandon all hope . An advanced country will not encounter, in the case of revolution, the difficulties which in backward Russia served as a base for the barbarous regime of Stalin . But a war of any scope will give rise to others as fo

Attributed to Simone Weil:

“To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.”

“All warfare is based on deception.”

兵者，詭道也。故能而示之不能，用而示之不用，近而示之遠，遠而示之近，

“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.”

是故勝兵先勝而後求戰，敗兵先戰而後求勝。

“The art of war is of vital importance to the State. It is a matter of life and death , a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.”

兵者，國之大事 ，死生之地，存亡之道，不可不察也。

Attributed to Sun Tzu:

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”

Attributed to Sun Tzu:

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”

“The details supplied by Khrushchev on Stalin’s methods ... lead us to believe in the existence in these countries of a veritable state capitalism , exploiting the working class in a manner not very different from the way the working class is used in capitalist countries.”

Wikiquote

Attributed to Aime Cesaire:

“Colonization equals thingification.”

Attributed to Aime Cesaire:

“Europe is indefensible.”

Attributed to Aime Cesaire:

“A civilization that proves incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent civilization.”

Attributed to Aime Cesaire:

“Negritude is the simple recognition of the fact that one is black, the acceptance of this fact and of our destiny as blacks, of our history and our culture.”

“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”

Prison Notebooks

“All men are intellectuals, but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals.”

Prison Notebooks

“To tell the truth is revolutionary.”

Letter from Prison (21 June 1919), translated by Hamish Henderson , Edinburgh University Student Publications .

“The history of education shows that every class which has sought to take power has prepared itself for power by an autonomous education. The first step in emancipating oneself from political and social slavery is that of freeing the mind. I put forward this new idea: popular schooling should be placed under the control of the great workers’ unions . The problem of education is the most important class problem .”

Cited in Davidson's (1977) Antonio Gramsci: Towards an Intellectual Biography. London: Merlin Press., p. 77.

Attributed to Antonio Gramsci:

“Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.”

“I measure the progress of a community by the degree of progress which women have achieved.”

As quoted in The Ultimate Book of Quotations by Joseph Demakis, p. 415

“Caste is not a division of labour; it is a division of labourers.”

As quoted in The Annihilation of Caste

“Religion is for man, not man for religion.”

Why I like Buddhism and how it is useful to the world in its present circumstances", BBC (May 1956). As quoted in "Why Dr. Ambedkar renounced Hinduism?

“It is an incontrovertible fact that Christianity was not enough to end the slavery of the Negroes in the United States . A civil war was necessary to give the Negro the freedom which was denied to him by the Christians. The dependence of those in charge of Christian endeavour to make the parties move on? A consideration of this question will enable us to understand why Christianity has failed to raise the status of the untouchable convert.”

On Christianity in Essays on Untouchables and Untouchability: Religious .

Attributed to B. R. Ambedkar:

“Educate, agitate, organize.”

“When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary; when mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable.”

As attributed in: Jeffrey Eisenach et al. (1993), Readings in renewing American civilization, p. 54

Attributed to Emile Durkheim:

“Society is not a mere sum of individuals; rather, the system formed by their association represents a specific reality which has its own characteristics.”

Attributed to Emile Durkheim:

“Religion is the system of symbols by means of which society becomes conscious of itself.”

Attributed to Emile Durkheim:

“Anomie is a state of normlessness, in which the individual is left without a moral compass.”

Attributed to Emile Durkheim:

“Man cannot become attached to higher aims and submit to a rule if he sees nothing above him to which he belongs.”

“The only people who accept slavery are the Negroes, owing to their low degree of humanity and proximity to the animal stage. Other persons who accept the status of slave do so as a means of attaining high rank, or power, or wealth, as is the case with the Mameluke Turks in the East and with those Franks and Galicians who enter the service of the state [in Spain].”

As quoted in Bernard Lewis , Race and Color in Islam, Harper and Row, 1970, quote on page 38. The brackets are displayed by Lewis.

Attributed to Ibn Khaldun:

“The vanquished always want to imitate the victor in his distinctive marks, his dress, his occupation, and all his other conditions and customs.”

Attributed to Ibn Khaldun:

“Civilization both begins and ends with desert living.”

Attributed to Ibn Khaldun:

“When civilization reaches the limit of luxury and ease, it begins to decay.”

Attributed to Ibn Khaldun:

“Differences of conditions among people are the result of the different ways in which they make their living.”

“Every nation has the government it deserves.”

Original text: Toute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle mérite. | Letter 76, on the topic of Russia's new constitutional laws (27 August 1811); published in Lettres et Opuscules . The English translation has several variations, including "Every country has the government it deserves" and "In a democracy people get the leaders they deserve." The quote is popularly misattributed to better-known commen

“All grandeur, all power, all subordination, rest on the executioner.”

First Dialogue," p. 20

“To know the nature of man, the most direct and wisest way undoubtedly is to know what he has always been. Since when can theories be opposed to facts? History is experimental politics; this is the best or rather the only good politics.”

p. 21

“Nations are barbarian in their infancy but not savage. The barbarian is a proportional mean between the savage and the citizen. He already possesses no end of knowledge: he has habitations, some agriculture, domestic animals, laws, a cult, regular tribunals; he lacks only the sciences .”

p. 25

“Men never respect what they have made themselves. This is why an elective king never possesses the moral power of a hereditary sovereign, because he is not noble enough, that is to say he does not possess that kind of greatness independent of men and that is the work of time .”

p. 72