black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

The agony of international relations is the need to try to practice politics without the basic conditions for political order.

Bernard Crick

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

Affair Democracy World
Politics has rough manners, but it is a very useful thing.
BERNARD CRICK

Manners Rough Things Useful
The praise of free men is worth having, for it is the only praise which is free from either servility or condescension.
BERNARD CRICK

Condescension Men Praise
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
To Marx the claim of the theory of ideology is that all doctrine is a derivative of social circumstance.
BERNARD CRICK

Derivatives Doctrine Social
If, of course, one builds into the concept of an ‘individual’ all that Professor Hayek does in his Road To Serfdom.
BERNARD CRICK

Builds Men Order Professor
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
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 political process is not tied to any particular doctrine. Genuine political doctrines, rather, are the attempt to find particular and workable solutions to this perpetual and shifty problem of conciliation.
BERNARD CRICK

Doctrine Political Politics Problem
BOREDOM with established truths is a great enemy of free men.
BERNARD CRICK

Boredom Enemy Men
Where government is impossible, politics is impossible.
BERNARD CRICK

Government Impossible
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
The politician has no more use for pride than Falstaff had for honour.
BERNARD CRICK

Honour Politician Pride Use
There is no great danger to politics in the desire for certainty at any price.
BERNARD CRICK

Certainty Danger Desire
The unique character of political activity lies, quite literally, in its publicity.
BERNARD CRICK

Character Lying Unique
Quite apart from the prestige of technology, people do, after all, prefer a simple idea to a complex one.
BERNARD CRICK

Ideas Simple Technology
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
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
Totalitarianism surpasses autocracy.
BERNARD CRICK

Autocracy Totalitarianism
Since the business of politics is the conciliation of differing interests, justice must not merely be done, but to be seen to be done.
BERNARD CRICK

Done Interest Justice
Politics are, as it were, the market place and the price mechanism of all social demands – though there is no guarantee that a just price will be struck; and there is nothing spontaneous about politics- it depends on deliberate and continuous activity.
BERNARD CRICK

Demand Guarantees Political
Politics is a way of ruling in divided societies without undue violence…politics is not just a necessary evil; it is a realistic good.
BERNARD CRICK

Evil Political Politics
The idea of a rational bureaucracy, of skill, merit, and consistency, is essential to all modern states.
BERNARD CRICK

Consistency Ideas Skills
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
Individualism and Economic Order and many other works, which is, to put it briefly, the whole of laisser-faire economic theory, then plainly man as such a programmed predator has very little interest in being fraternal, or very little chance.
BERNARD CRICK

Economic Individualism Programmed Such Theory
In an abstract but real sense, Marxism arose through the breakdown first of religion and then of ‘reason’ as single sources of authority.
BERNARD CRICK

Firsts Real Reason
Too often the revolutionary is the man who must create order in the chaos left by failed conservatives.
BERNARD CRICK

Chaos Conservatives Men Order

The agony of international relations is the need to try to practice politics without the basic conditions for political order.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

The agony of international relations is the need to try to practice politics without the basic conditions for political order.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Bernard Crick Quotes