This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Carl von Clausewitz, fully Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz, also Karl von Clausewitz
War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.
Politics |
Junius, psyeudonym of unknown English Political Writer NULL
There is a wholly mistaken zeal in politics as well as in religion. By persuading others, we convince ourselves.
Karl Popper, fully Sir Karl Raimund Popper
There is no history of mankind, there are only many histories of all kinds of aspects of human life. And one of these is the history of political power. This is elevated into the history of the world. But… the history of power politics is nothing but the history of international crime and mass murder… This history is taught in schools, and some of the greatest criminals are extolled as its heroes.
Today’s milestone is human madness. Politics is a part of it, particularly in its lethal outbursts. Politics is not, as it was for Hannah Arendt, the field where human freedom is unfurled. The modern world, the world of world war, the Third World, the underground world of death that acts upon us, do not have the civilized splendor of the Greek city state. The modern political domain is massively, in totalitarian fashion, social, leveling, exhausting. Hence madness is a space of antisocial, apolitical, and paradoxically free individuation.
It should be noted that people in the free market rarely bear false witness; integrity is the rule. The morning mile, phone calls, planes the airlines buy, autos by the millions – no one could list the instances – are as represented. We have daily, eloquent, enormous testimony that the Ten Commandments can be and are observed by fallible human beings. Contemporary politics is the most glaring of all exceptions.
Lloyd George, fully David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor
A politician is a person with whose politics you don't agree; if you agree with him he's a statesman.
Politics |
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morely of Blackburn, Lord Morley
In politics the choice is constantly between two evils.
The pursuit of politics is religion, morality, and poetry all in one.
Ludwig von Mises, fully Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises
Therefore it is not arrogance or narrowrnindedness that leads the economist to discuss these things from the standpoint of economics. No one, who is not able to form an independent opinion about the admittedly difficult and highly technical problem of calculation in the socialist economy, should take sides in the question of socialism versus capitalism. No one should speak about interventionism who has not examined the economic consequences of interventionism. An end should be put to the common practice of discussing these problems from the standpoint of the prevailing errors, fallacies, and prejudices. It might be more entertaining to avoid the real issues and merely to use popular catchwords and emotional slogans. But politics is a serious matter. Those who do not want to think its problems through to the end should keep away from it.
Arrogance | Consequences | Opinion | Politics | Practice | Problems | Question | Think |
Mao Tse-tung, alternatively Zedong, Ze dong, aka Chairman Mao
Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.
Mario Puzo, fully Mario Gianluigi Puzo
Finance is a gun. Politics is knowing when to pull the trigger.
Religion means goal and way, politics implies end and means. The political end is recognizable by the fact that it may be attained—in success—and its attainment is historically recorded. The religious goal remains, even in man's highest experiences, that which simply provides direction on the mortal way; it never enters into historical consummation.
Attainment | Means | Mortal | Politics |
Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton
I have never found in a long experience of politics that criticism is ever inhibited by ignorance.
Criticism | Experience | Politics |
Max Lerner, fully Maxwell "Max" Alan Lerner, aka Mikhail Lerner
The politics of surprise leads through the Gates of Astonishment into the Kingdom of Hope.
Politics |
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war.
The need to overcome the potentially fascistic direction of American politics as the Religious Right and the secular right strengthen their alliance and their hold on American political institutions makes us want to transcend past upsets and focus on how to build the most effective social change movement for the future.
We need to build millions of little moments of caring on an individual level. Indeed, as talk of a politics of meaning becomes more widespread, many people will feel it easier to publicly acknowledge their own spiritual and ethical aspirations and will allow themselves to give more space to their highest vision in their personal interactions with others. A politics of meaning is as much about these millions of small acts as it is about any larger change. The two necessarily go hand in hand.
Individual | Little | Meaning | Need | People | Politics | Space | Vision | Will |
Mikhail Bakunin, fully Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin
Idealism is the despot of thought, just as politics is the despot of will.
Mikhail Bakunin, fully Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin
This explains why, since the birth of the State, the world of politics has always been and continues to be the stage for unlimited rascality and brigandage, brigandage and rascality which, by the way, are held in high esteem, since they are sanctified by patriotism, by the transcendent morality and the supreme interest of the State. This explains why the entire history of ancient and modern states is merely a series of revolting crimes; why kings and ministers, past and present, of all times and all countries — statesmen, diplomats, bureaucrats, and warriors — if judged from the standpoint of simple morality and human justice, have a hundred, a thousand times over earned their sentence to hard labour or to the gallows. There is no horror, no cruelty, sacrilege, or perjury, no imposture, no infamous transaction, no cynical robbery, no bold plunder or shabby betrayal that has not been or is not daily being perpetrated by the representatives of the states, under no other pretext than those elastic words, so convenient and yet so terrible: "for reasons of state.
Betrayal | Birth | History | Morality | Past | Politics | World |