black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

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

Character Lying Unique
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
Totalitarianism surpasses autocracy.
BERNARD CRICK

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

Ideas Simple Technology
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
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
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
Politics has rough manners, but it is a very useful thing.
BERNARD CRICK

Manners Rough Things Useful
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
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
Free men stick their necks out.
BERNARD CRICK

Free Men Neck Sticks

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Bernard Crick Quotes