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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

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

Certainty Danger Desire
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
Quite apart from the prestige of technology, people do, after all, prefer a simple idea to a complex one.
BERNARD CRICK

Ideas Simple Technology
BOREDOM with established truths is a great enemy of free men.
BERNARD CRICK

Boredom Enemy Men
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
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
Too often the revolutionary is the man who must create order in the chaos left by failed conservatives.
BERNARD CRICK

Chaos Conservatives Men Order
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
Free men stick their necks out.
BERNARD CRICK

Free Men Neck Sticks
Where government is impossible, politics is impossible.
BERNARD CRICK

Government Impossible
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
Totalitarianism surpasses autocracy.
BERNARD CRICK

Autocracy Totalitarianism
The unique character of political activity lies, quite literally, in its publicity.
BERNARD CRICK

Character Lying Unique

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

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

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Popular Authors

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