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The unique character of political activity lies, quite literally, in its publicity.

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
Totalitarianism surpasses autocracy.
BERNARD CRICK

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

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

Certainty Danger Desire
The politician has no more use for pride than Falstaff had for honour.
BERNARD CRICK

Honour Politician Pride Use
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
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
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
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
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
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

The unique character of political activity lies, quite literally, in its publicity.

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The unique character of political activity lies, quite literally, in its publicity.

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Popular Authors

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