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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

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

Boredom Enemy Men
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
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
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
Politics has rough manners, but it is a very useful thing.
BERNARD CRICK

Manners Rough Things Useful
To Marx the claim of the theory of ideology is that all doctrine is a derivative of social circumstance.
BERNARD CRICK

Derivatives Doctrine Social
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
The unique character of political activity lies, quite literally, in its publicity.
BERNARD CRICK

Character Lying Unique
Too often the revolutionary is the man who must create order in the chaos left by failed conservatives.
BERNARD CRICK

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

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

Certainty Danger Desire
Factory workers are not working for capitalism, they are working for a living wage.
BERNARD CRICK

Factory Living Workers Working
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

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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