Political Philosophy

“Strong democracy is democracy in the participatory mode.”

“Neoliberalism is not simply about the deregulation of capital. It is about the production of a new type of subject.”

“Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.”

“Democracy is not an alternative to other principles of associated life. It is the idea of community life itself.”

“The division of labor can be effected only among members of an already constituted society.”

“Rights are trumps.”

“The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.”

“The separation of powers is a product of the struggle between civil society and political society.”

“The union of primary and secondary rules is at the center of a legal system.”

“The aim of the law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom.”

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

“Without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.”

“Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

“Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself, in all cases, as the ages and generations which preceded it.”

“The open society is one in which individuals are confronted with personal decisions.”

“An overlapping consensus is a consensus in which the same political conception of justice is affirmed by the opposing religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines.”

“The normal way to establish that a person has authority over another person involves showing that the alleged subject is likely better to comply with reasons which apply to him anyway if he accepts the directives of the alleged authority as authoritatively binding and tries to follow them.”

“Justice is not only about the right way to distribute things. It is also about the right way to value things.”

“Sovereign is he who decides on the exception.”

“Development can be seen as a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy.”

“The discovery of natural right is the emergence of philosophy.”

“The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in being able to repair its faults.”

“The aim of political egalitarianism is a society free from domination.”

“The state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.”

“The ruling ideology is not something that is imposed on us. It is the spontaneous attitude we have.”

“Individuals have rights, and there are things no person or group may do to them without violating those rights.”

“I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves.”

“Labor is the activity which corresponds to the biological process of the human body; work is the activity which corresponds to the unnaturalness of human existence; action, the only activity that goes on directly between men without the intermediary of things or matter, corresponds to the human condition of plurality.”

“The right to have rights... means to live in a framework where one is judged by one's actions and opinions.”

“Man is by nature a political animal.”

“Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal. And he who by nature and not by mere accident is without a state is either a bad man or above humanity.”

“I am normally said to be free to the degree to which no man or body of men interferes with my activity. Political liberty in this sense is simply the area within which a man can act unobstructed by others.”

“Society is indeed a contract... It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”

“Society is indeed a contract... but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee... It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue and in all perfection.”

“After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, — a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.”

“National liberation, national renaissance, the restoration of nationhood to the people, commonwealth: whatever the name used, decolonization is always a violent phenomenon.”

“Power is everywhere; not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere.”

“Power is everywhere; not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere.”

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

“The concept of communicative action refers to the interaction of at least two subjects capable of speech and action who establish interpersonal relations. The actors seek to reach an understanding about the action situation and their plans of action in order to coordinate their actions by way of agreement.”

“For by art is created that great Leviathan called a Commonwealth or State, which is but an artificial man.”

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”

“The consent of the people is the only foundation of all lawful government.”

“The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind... that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.”

“In the actions of all men, and especially of princes, where there is no court to appeal to, one looks to the end.”

“In the actions of all men, and especially of princes, where there is no court of appeal, one judges by the result. Let a prince therefore aim at conquering and maintaining the state; the means will always be judged honorable.”

“Men have less hesitation in offending one who makes himself loved than one who makes himself feared; for love is held by a bond of obligation which, because men are wretched, is broken on every occasion whenever their own interests are concerned; but fear is held by a dread of punishment that never abandons you.”

“The answer is that one would like to be both the one and the other; but because it is difficult to combine them, it is far safer to be feared than loved if you cannot be both.”

“The workers have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workers of the world, unite!”

“The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries, unite!”

“The tyranny of the majority is now generally included among the evils against which society requires to be on its guard. Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant — society collectively, over the separate individuals who compose it — its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do through the hands of its political functionaries.”

“The tyranny of the majority is now generally included among the evils against which society requires to be on its guard.”

“Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.”

“The Orient was almost a European invention, and had been since antiquity a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences.”

“The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal.”

“Freedom is not the mere absence of restraint, nor is it the presence of opportunity. The concept of negative liberty and positive liberty point to fundamentally different relations between the individual and the state.”

“Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense, nonsense upon stilts.”

“True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands and averts from wrongdoing by its prohibitions.”

“The commonwealth is the property of the people: the people is the multitude bound together by the agreement on what is right and the community of interest — and the republic that has lost the justice has lost the name.”

“Self-consciousness exists in and for itself when, and by the fact that, it so exists for another; that is, it exists only in being acknowledged.”

“Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.”

“Obedience to a law which we prescribe to ourselves is liberty.”

“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 principle of natural law.”

“He intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.”

“It is much safer to be feared than loved because love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.”

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

“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”