black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

If a government is to do great new things, it will need more support. If a government is to change the world, it will need mass support. This is one of the discoveries of modern government.

Bernard Crick

Politics deserves much praise. Politics is a preoccupation of free men, and its existence is a test of freedom. The praise of free men is worth having, for it is the only praise which is free from either servility or condescension.
BERNARD CRICK

Men Political Politics
One of the symptoms of a declining social order is that its members have to give most of their time to politics, rather than to the real tasks of economic production, in an attempt to patch up the cracks already appearing from the ‘inner contradictions’ of such a system.
BERNARD CRICK

Giving Order Real
Democracy is perhaps the most promiscuous word in the world of public affairs.
BERNARD CRICK

Affair Democracy World
Politics is too often regarded as a poor relation, inherently dependent and subsidiary; it is rarely praised as something with a life and character of its own.
BERNARD CRICK

Character Poor Relation
The plain truth is that what holds a free state together is neither general will nor a common interest, but simply politics itself.
BERNARD CRICK

Political Politics Together
The agony of international relations is the need to try to practice politics without the basic conditions for political order.
BERNARD CRICK

Agony Order Practice
What matters in Politics is what men actually do – sincerity is no excuse for acting unpolitically, and insincerity may be channelled by politics into good results.
BERNARD CRICK

Acting Matter Men What
Politics has rough manners, but it is a very useful thing.
BERNARD CRICK

Manners Rough Things Useful
Certainly if the fundamental problem of society is that demands are infinite and resources are always limited, politics, not economics is the master science.
BERNARD CRICK

Demand Fundamentals Problem
If a government is to do great new things, it will need more support. If a government is to change the world, it will need mass support. This is one of the discoveries of modern government.
BERNARD CRICK

Discovery Government Need Support
Where government is impossible, politics is impossible.
BERNARD CRICK

Government Impossible
BOREDOM with established truths is a great enemy of free men.
BERNARD CRICK

Boredom Enemy Men
The method of rule of the tyrant and the oligarch is quite simply to clobber, coerce, or overawe all or most other groups in the interest of their own.
BERNARD CRICK

Groups Method Tyrants
Totalitarian rule marks the sharpest contrast imaginable with political rule, and ideological thinking is an explicit and direct challenge to political thinking.
BERNARD CRICK

Challenges Ideological Political Rule Thinking
The politician has no more use for pride than Falstaff had for honour.
BERNARD CRICK

Honour Politician Pride Use
The idea of a rational bureaucracy, of skill, merit, and consistency, is essential to all modern states.
BERNARD CRICK

Consistency Ideas Skills

If a government is to do great new things, it will need more support. If a government is to change the world, it will need mass support. This is one of the discoveries of modern government.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

If a government is to do great new things, it will need more support. If a government is to change the world, it will need mass support. This is one of the discoveries of modern government.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Bernard Crick Quotes