Philosopher Quotes on Politics

“As for me, I cease not to advocate peace. It may be on unjust terms, but even so it is more expedient than the justest of civil wars. Epistulae ad Atticum (Letters to Atticus) Book VII, Letter 14, section 3; as translated by E.O. Winstedt in the Loeb Classical Library”

Equidem ad pacem hortari non desino; quae vel iniusta utilior est quam iustissimum bellum cum civibus.

“since our leading men think themselves in a seventh heaven, if there are bearded mullets in their fish-ponds that will come to hand for food, and neglect everything else, do not you think that I am doing no mean service if I secure that those who have the power, should not have the will, to do any harm?”

Letters to Atticus, Book II, 1.

“Injustice often arises also through chicanery, that is, through an over-subtle and even fraudulent construction of the law. This it is that gave rise to the now familiar saw, "More law, less justice."”

De Officiis–On Duties(44 BC) | Book I, section 33; translation by Walter Miller.

“Law is the perfection of reason implanted in us by nature, which enjoins what should be done, and forbids what we should not do.”

De Legibus(On the Laws)(c. 40s BC)

“Than a smatterer in law, wary, indeed, and a smart prater about actions, a setter-forth of forms, a captious wrangler.”

De Oratore–On the Orator(55 BC) | Book I, Chapter 55; J. W. Jones, A Translation of all the Greek, Latin, Italian, and French Quotations which Occur in Blackstone's 'Commentaries on the Laws of England', &c. (Philadelphia, PA: T. & J.

“Imagination is not an empirical or superadded power of consciousness, it is the whole of consciousness as it realizes its freedom .”

L'imagination ( Imagination: A Psychological Critique ) (1936)

“I do not give a damn about the dead. They died for the [Communist] Party and the Party can decide what it wants. I practice a live man's politics, for the living.”

Dirty Hands(1948) | Act 5, sc. 3

“For Genet, reflective states of mind are the rule. And although they are of an unstable nature in everyone, in him...reflection is always contrary to the reflected feeling.”

Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr(1952) | p. 278

“Politics is a science. You can demonstrate that you are right and that others are wrong.”

Dirty Hands(1948) | Act 5, sc. 2

“If we must absolutely mention this state of affairs, I suggest that we call ourselves "absent", that is more proper.”

No Exit(1944) | Estelle, refusing to use the word "dead", Act 1, sc. 5

“It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.”

Il est dangereux d'avoir raison dans des choses où des hommes accrédités ont tort.

“What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly — that is the first law of nature.”

Dictionnaire philosophique portatif(1764) | "Tolerance" (1764)

“Voltaire inscribed on a statue of Love: "Whoever thou art, behold thy master! He rules thee, or has ruled thee, or will rule thee!"”

A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness(1902) | p. 159

“A minister of state is excusable for the harm he does when the helm of government has forced his hand in a storm; but in the calm he is guilty of all the good he does not do.”

1750s | Le Siècle de Louis XIV , ch. VI: "État de la France jusqu'à la mort du cardinal Mazarin en 1661" (1752) Unsourced paraphrase or variant translation: Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.

Attributed to Voltaire:

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

“The superior man thinks of virtue ; the small man thinks of comfort . The superior man thinks of the sanctions of law ; the small man thinks of favors which he may receive.”

Analects | James Legge , translation (1893)

“The superior man, extensively studying all learning, and keeping himself under the restraint of the rules of propriety, may thus likewise not overstep what is right.”

Analects

“If the people have no faith in their rulers, there is no standing for the state.”

Analects | VII

“The Master said, "He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the north polar star , which keeps its place and all the stars turn towards it."”

Analects

“Guide the people by law, subdue them by punishment; they may shun crime, but will be void of shame. Guide them by example, subdue them by courtesy; they will learn shame, and come to be good.”

Analects

“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

“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

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”

There can be only one permanent revolution — a moral one; the regeneration of the inner man. How is this revolution to take place? Nobody knows how it will take place in humanity, but every man feels it clearly in himself. And yet in our world everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself.

“The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all his beauty, who has been, is, and will be beautiful, is Truth.”

Sevastopol in May (1855), Ch. 16

“I know that my unity with all people cannot be destroyed by national boundaries and government orders.”

My Religion (1884), as translated in The Human Experience : Contemporary American and Soviet Fiction and Poetry (1989) by the Quaker US/USSR Committee

“For us, with the rule of right and wrong given us by Christ, there is nothing for which we have no standard. And there is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.”

War and Peace(1865–1867; 1869) | Bk. XIV, ch. 18

“All state obligations are against the conscience of a Christian: the oath of allegiance, taxes, law proceedings and military service.”

The Kingdom of God is Within You(1894) | Chapter VII , Significance of Compulsory Service

“On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.”

Si, avons nous beau monter sur des échasses, car sur des échasses encore faut-il marcher de nos jambes. Et au plus élevé trône du monde, si ne sommes assis que sur notre cul.

“'T is one and the same Nature that rolls on her course, and whoever has sufficiently considered the present state of things might certainly conclude as to both the future and the past.”

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919) | Book II, Ch. 12. Apology for Raimond Sebond

“The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom.”

Book I | Ch. 22. Of Custom (tr. Cotton, rev. W. Hazlitt, 1842)

“There is no man so good that if he placed all his actions and thoughts under the scrutiny of the laws , he would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.”

Book III

“It would be better to have no laws at all than to have them in such profusion as we do.”

Book III | Ch. 13

“It is quite impossible for a proposition to state that it itself is true. (4.442)”

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus(1922) | Original German: Ein Satz kann unmöglich von sich selbst aussagen, dass er wahr ist.

“To convince someone of the truth, it is not enough to state it, but rather one must find the path from error to truth.”

Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951(1993) | Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer 's Golden Bough , p. 119

“Though a state of affairs that would contravene the laws of physics can be represented by us spatially, one that would contravene the laws of geometry cannot. (3.0321)”

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus(1922) | Original German: Wohl können wir einen Sachverhalt räumlich darstellen, welcher den Gesetzen der Physik, aber keinen, der den Gesetzen der Geometrie zuwiderliefe.

“For remember that in general we don't use language according to strict rules — it hasn't been taught us by means of strict rules, either.”

The Blue Book(c. 1931–1935; published 1965) | p. 25

“To obey a rule, to make a report, to give an order, to play a game of chess , are customs (uses, institutions )”

Philosophical Investigations(1953) | § 199

“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.

“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)

“Kaffirs are as a rule uncivilised—the convicts even more so. They are troublesome, very dirty and live almost like animals .”

1900s | "My Experience in Gaol", Indian Opinion (7 March 1908). Also: Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi , op cit., Vol. 8, p. 199.

“"An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so."”

1930s | From a letter to the Viceroy, 1930, published in The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi , Vol. 49, p. 180.

“The only thing lawful is non-violence. Violence can never be lawful in the sense meant here, i.e., not according to man-made laws, but according to the laws made by Nature for man.”

1940s | Harijan (27 October 1946) p. 369

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.”

The Common Good

“If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.”

Noam Chomsky in interview by John Pilger on The Late Show BBC Television, November 25, 1992 .

“Chap. 8 : The Explanatory Power of Linguistic Theory”

There are many facts about language and linguistic behavior that require explanation beyond the fact that such and such a string (which no one may ever have produced) is or is not a sentence. It is reasonable to expect grammars to provide explanations for some of these facts.

“In general, the rules of stylistic reordering are very different from the grammatical transformations, which are much more deeply embedded in the grammatical system.”

Aspects of the Theory of Syntax(1965) | Chap. 2 : Categories and Relations in Syntactic Theory

“If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.”

1990–1994 | talk at St. Michael's College , Vermont, around 1990 [7] .

“On War against the Turk (1529)”

His Mohammed, as has been said, commands that ruling is to be done by the sword, and in his Koran the sword is the commonest and noblest work. Thus the Turk is, in truth, nothing but a murderer or highwayman, as his deeds show before men’s eyes.

“Some will object that the Law is divine and holy. Let it be divine and holy. The Law has no right to tell me that I must be justified by it.”

Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians(1535) | Chapter 2

“By the law is the knowledge of sin [Rom 3:20], so the word of grace comes only to those who are distressed by a sense of sin and tempted to despair.”

On the Bondage of the Will(1525) | p. 168

“Leave the ass burdened with laws behind in the valley. But your conscience, let it ascend with Isaac into the mountain.”

Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians(1535) | Chapter 2, Verse 14

“The true Gospel has it that we are justified by faith alone, without the deeds of the Law.”

Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians(1535) | Chapter 2

“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)

“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”

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)

“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)

“A leader is best when people barely know he exists. When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.”

Tao Te Ching, Chapter 17

“When men lack a sense of awe, there will be disaster.”

translated by Gia Fu Feng

“People are difficult to be ruled, Because the ruler governs with personal desire and establishes too many laws to confuse the people.”

Chapter 75

“let people return to the use of knots and be satisfied with their food and pleased with their clothing and content with their homes and happy with their customs let there be another state so near people hear its dogs and chickens but live out their lives without making a visit”

Chapter 80 | translated by Red Pine

“The more prohibitions that are imposed on people, The poorer the people become. The more laws and regulations that exist, The more thieves and brigands appear. The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there will be.”

Chapter 57 | Variant translation: The more prohibitions there are, the poorer the people will be.

“He who outrages benevolence is called a ruffian: he who outrages righteousness is called a villain. I have heard of the cutting off of the villain Chow, but I have not heard of the putting of a ruler to death .”

1B:8, In relation to righteousness and the overthrow of the tyrannous King Zhou of Shang , as translated by Sir Robert Kennaway Douglas, China (1904), p. 8 | Variant translations: The ruffian and the villain we call a mere fellow. I have heard of killing the fellow Chou; I have not heard of killing a king. In Free China Review , Vol. 5 (1955) I have merely heard of killing a villain Zhou, but I ha

“Variant translations: The ruffian and the villain we call a mere fellow. I have heard of killing the fellow Chou; I have not heard of killing a king. In Free China Review , Vol. 5 (1955) I have merely heard of killing a villain Zhou, but I have not heard of murdering the ruler. Wing-tsit Chan, in A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (1963), p. 78”

He who outrages benevolence is called a ruffian: he who outrages righteousness is called a villain. I have heard of the cutting off of the villain Chow, but I have not heard of the putting of a ruler to death .

“I have merely heard of killing a villain Zhou, but I have not heard of murdering the ruler.”

The Mencius | Wing-tsit Chan, in A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (1963), p. 78

“Of the first importance are the people, next comes the good of land and grains, and of the least importance is the ruler.”

The Mencius

“The people are the most important ... and the ruler is the least important.”

The Mencius

“If it is correct to say that there will always be rightist temperaments and leftist temperaments, it is nevertheless also correct to say that political philosophy is neither rightist nor leftist; it must simply be true .”

The Twilight of Civilization (1939). London: Sheed & Ward, 1946, p. 41.

“Scholasticism and Politics (1940)”

In so far as we are individuals, each of us is a fragment of a species, a part of this universe, a single dot in the immense network of forces and influences, cosmic, ethnic, historic, whose laws we obey. We are subject to the determination of the physical world. But each man is also a person, he is not subject to the stars and atoms; for he subsists entirely with the very subsistence of his spiri

“Not only does the democratic state of mind stem from the inspiration of the Gospel, but it cannot exist without it.”

Christianity and Democracy(1943) | p. 49.

Attributed to Jacques Maritain:

“Human rights are the rights of human beings as moral persons.”

Attributed to Jacques Maritain:

“There is one human nature, common to all the diverse cultures of mankind.”

“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 ]

“No tyranny is more cruel than the one practiced in the shadow of the laws and under color of justice — when, so to speak, one proceeds to drown the unfortunate on the very plank by which they had saved themselves.”

Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline(1876) | See Chap. XIV of Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence . Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline (1734), p. 89. Quoted in

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.”

“Thus every Part was full of Vice, Yet the whole Mass a Paradise; Flatter'd in Peace, and fear'd in Wars, They were th' Esteem of Foreigners, And lavish of their Wealth and Lives, The Balance of all other Hives.”

The Grumbling Hive", line 155, p. 9

Attributed to Bernard Mandeville:

“Private vices, public benefits.”

Attributed to Bernard Mandeville:

“Pride is the great support of art and industry.”

Attributed to Bernard Mandeville:

“We do not need to be virtuous in order to live well in society.”

Attributed to Bernard Mandeville:

“Hunger, thirst and nakedness are the first tyrants that force us to stir.”

“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

“Men already had ideas on law, morality, the family, the state, and society itself before the advent of social science, for these ideas were necessary conditions of his life”

The Rules of Sociological Method,1895 | p. 14

“Methodological rules are for science what rules of law and custom are for conduct.”

The Division of Labor in Society(1893) | p. 364

“It is society which, fashioning us in its image, fills us with religious, political, and moral beliefs that control our actions.”

Suicide: A Study in Sociology(1897)

“Once the generality of the phenomenon has been established, one can, by showing its utility, confirm the results of the first method. We may, therefore, formulate the three following rules:”

The Rules of Sociological Method,1895

“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.”

“We must fight those who are committed to destruction , without replicating their destructiveness. Understanding how to fight in this way is the task and the bind of a nonviolent ethics and politics.”

Chapter One | p. 64

“There is no practice of nonviolence that does not negotiate fundamental ethical and political ambiguities, which means that “nonviolence” is not an absolute principle, but the name of an ongoing struggle.”

Introduction | p. 23

“To affirm equality is to affirm a cohabitation defined in part by an interdependency that takes the edge off the individual boundaries of the body, or that works that edge for its social and political potential.”

Chapter Three | p. 148

“If nonviolence is to make sense as an ethical and political position, it cannot simply repress aggression or do away with its reality; rather, nonviolence emerges as a meaningful concept precisely when destruction is most likely or seems most certain.”

Chapter One | p. 39

Attributed to Judith Butler:

“To be a body is to be exposed to social crafting and form.”

“Property is theft.”

Property is robbery! That is the war-cry of '93! That is the signal of revolutions ! Reader, calm yourself: I am no agent of discord, no firebrand of sedition . I anticipate history by a few days; I disclose a truth whose development we may try in vain to arrest; I write the preamble of our future constitution . This proposition which seems to you blasphemous — property is robbery — would, if our

“Anarchy is order; government is civil war.”

As man seeks justice in equality , so society seeks order in anarchy .

“All my economic ideas as developed over twenty-five years can be summed up in the words: agricultural-industrial federation. All my political ideas boil down to a similar formula: political federation or decentralization.”

Du principe Fédératif [ Principle of Federation ] (1863)

“All parties without exception, when they seek for power , are varieties of absolutism .”

As quoted in Philosophy at Work : A Constructive Approach to Philosophy (1960) by Ralph Bubrich Winn

“I stand ready to negotiate, but I want no part of laws: I acknowledge none; I protest against every order with which some authority may feel pleased on the basis of some alleged necessity to over-rule my free will. Laws: We know what they are, and what they are worth! They are spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the poor and weak, fishing nets in the hands of government .”

As quoted in "The Authority Principle" in No Gods, No Masters : An Anthology of Anarchism (1980) Daniel Guérin, as translated by Paul Sharkey (1998), p. 90

“The multitude is the productive flesh of the world.”

(62)

“Empire is emerging today as the center that supports the globalization of productive networks and casts its widely inclusive net to try to envelop all power relations within its world order — and yet at the same time it deploys a powerful police function against the new barbarians and the rebellious slaves who threaten its order.”

(20)

“The refusal of work and authority, or really the refusal of voluntary servitude, is the beginning of liberatory politics.”

(204)

“[No] effective blueprint [of a political alternative to Empire] will ever arise from a theoretical articulation such as ours.”

(206)

“[on zapatistas] The goal has never been to defeat the state and claim sovereign authority but rather to change the world without taking power.”

Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire | (85)

“Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible; man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.”

The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (1944)

“The whole art of politics consists in directing rationally the irrationalities of men.”

As quoted in obituary '"Reinhold Niebuhr Is Dead; Protestant Theologian, 78" by Alden Whitman in The New York Times (2 June 1971)

“The stupidity of the average man will permit the oligarch , whether economic or political, to hide his real purposes from the scrutiny of his fellows and to withdraw his activities from effective control. Since it is impossible to count on enough moral goodwill among those who possess irresponsible power to sacrifice it for the good of the whole, it must be destroyed by coercive methods and these will always run the peril of introducing new forms of injustice in place of those abolished.”

p.21

Attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr:

“Goodness, armed with power, is corrupted; pure love without power is destroyed.”

Attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr:

“The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.”

“[T]he quest for a social world that can better do justice to a being whose most remarkable quality is precisely the power to overcome and revise, with time, every social or mental structure in which he moves.”

p. 105

“In a free society, the individual has the educational equipment, as well as the economic and political occasion, to cross the frontier between the activities that take the framework for granted and those that bring it into question. He has been educated in a way that enables the mind as imagination to become ascendant over the mind as machine. He has learned to philosophize by acting, in the sense that he recognizes in every project the seed of some great or small reformation.”

p. 295

“I have pursued this intellectual program by building a radical alternative in social theory to Marxism, by recasting legal thought as an instrument of the institutional imagination, by proposing particular institutional alternatives for the organization of the economy and the state, and by developing a philosophical conception of nature and mankind within which history is open, novelty is possible, and the divinization of humanity counts for more than the humanization of society.”

p. 187-8

“[T]he indispensable instrument of a visionary politics is collective mobilization, which brings people together in ways not foreordained by the established structure or the prevailing dogmas of society.”

Plasticity Into Power: Comparative-Historical Studies on the Institutional Conditions of Economic and Military Success(1987) | p. 12

Attributed to Roberto Mangabeira Unger:

“We are bigger than the structures we build and inhabit; politics begins when we remember this.”