Quotes by Political Scientists - Page 4

Secularism drew a radical distinction between public and private life, in which religion, in any traditional sense, was relegated to the private sphere with no hold over public life. There are many charms in secularism, in particular the freedom to believe what you will in private. But secularism also poses a public problem. There are those whose beliefs are so different from others’ beliefs that finding common ground in the public space is impossible. And then there are those for whom the very distinction between private and public is either meaningless or unacceptable. The complex contrivances of secularism have their charm, but not everyone is charmed.
George Friedman
Social capital may turn out to be a prerequisite for, rather than a consequence of, effective computer-mediated communication.
Robert D. Putnam
Americans have a tendency to believe that when there's a problem there must be a solution.
Henry Kissinger
Encouragement of sedentarism is perhaps the oldest "state project," a project related to the second-oldest state project of taxation.
James C. Scott
The nice thing about being a celebrity is that when you bore people they think it's their fault.
Henry Kissinger
Politicians are like bad horsemen who are so preoccupied with staying in the saddle that they can’t bother about where they’re going.
Joseph Alois Schumpeter
The human impulse behind the isolation of class is as basic as impulses get: People like to be around other people who understand them and to whom they can talk.
Charles Murray
The religionists are the enemies of liberty, and the friends of liberty attack religion; the high-minded and the noble advocate bondage, and the meanest and most servile preach independence; honest and enlightened citizens are opposed to all progress, whilst men without patriotism and without principle put themselves forward as the apostles of civilization and intelligence. Has such been the fate of the centuries which have preceded our own? and has man always inhabited a world like the present, where all things are out of their natural connections, where virtue is without genius, and genius without honor; where the love of order is confounded with a taste for oppression, and the holy rites of freedom with a contempt of law; where the light thrown by conscience on human actions is dim, and where nothing seems to be any longer forbidden or allowed, honorable or shameful, false or true?
Alexis de Tocqueville
Measured in terms of the World Bank poverty standard, the number of poor people in China fell from 652 million to 135 million between 1981 and 2004 - in other words, more than half a billion people were lifted out of poverty. The number of poor people in the developing world as a whole declined by only 400 million over the same period. In other words, but for China, there would have been an increase in the number of poor people in the developing world. No wonder a World Bank report said that "a fall in the number of poor of this magnitude over such a short period is without historical precedent.
Wang Shaoguang
When justice is more certain and more mild, is at the same time more efficacious.
Alexis de Tocqueville
The worst president is closer by nature to the best then either is to anyone who has not gone through what it requires to become president.
George Friedman
Power is nothing unless you can turn it into influence.
Condoleezza Rice
Culture is the celebration of diversity. Let us therefore not deny our origin; but instead celebrate ours as a cultural mosaic not a tower of Babel , but a power of Babel
Ali A. Mazrui
I follow the course marked out by my principles and, what is more, enjoy a deep and noble pleasure in following it. You deeply despise the human race, at least our part of it; you think it not only fallen but incapable of ever rising again... For my part, as I feel neither the right nor the wish to entertain such opinions of my species and my country, I think it is not necessary to despair of them. In my opinion, human societies, like individuals, amount to something only in liberty...And God forbid that my mind should ever be crossed by the thought that it is necessary to despair of success... You will allow me to have less confidence in your teaching than in the goodness and justice of God.
Alexis de Tocqueville
The things you do for yourself are gone when you are gone, but the things you do for others remain as your legacy.
Kalu Ndukwe Kalu
The free worker receives a wage; the slave an education, food, care, clothing; the money that the master spends to keep the slave is drained little by little and in detail; one hardly perceives it.1
Alexis de Tocqueville
The healthy being craves an occasional wildness a jolt from normality a sharpening of the edge of appetite his own little festival of the Saturnalia a brief excursion from his way of life.
Robert Maclver
Data can bear on policy issues, but many of our opinions about policy are grounded in premises about the nature of human life and human society that are beyond the reach of data.
Charles Murray
I have only to contemplate myself; man comes from nothing, passes through time, and disappears forever in the bosom of God. He is seen but for a moment wandering on the verge of two abysses, and then is lost.If man were wholly ignorant of himself he would have no poetry in him, for one cannot describe what one does not conceive. If he saw himself clearly, his imagination would remain idle and would have nothing to add to the picture. But the nature of man is sufficiently revealed for him to know something of himself and sufficiently veiled to leave much impenetrable darkness, a darkness in which he ever gropes, forever in vain, trying to understand himself.
Alexis de Tocqueville
There was no more reasonable sequitur between “provocation” and “reaction” in the case of the French Revolution than in the case of the Jews and the Nazis, the Armenians and the young Turks, the old Russian regime, the Kerensky interlude and bolshevism, Portuguese colonial rule in Angola and the horrors perpetrated by savage monsters of Holden Roberto’s “Liberation Front,” the Belgian administration in the Congo and the delirious atrocities of Gbenye and Mulele, British colonialism in Kenya and the Mau-Mau. We have to face the fact that man is not “good”—only the extraordinary man is, only the heroic saint or the saintly hero, while the noble savage belongs to the world of fairy tales.
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
The main vehicle for nineteenth-century socialization was the leading textbook used in elementary school. They were so widely used that sections in them became part of the national language. Theodore Roosevelt, scion of an elite New York family, schooled by private tutors, had been raised on the same textbooks as the children of Ohio farmers, Chicago tradesman, and New England fishermen. If you want to know what constituted being a good American from the mid-nineteenth century to World War I, spend a few hours browsing through the sections in the McGuffey Readers.
Charles Murray
We might think we know how we are being affected by the media—a book, a movie, a TV series. Ironically, this so-called awareness, the “third person effect,” is most common with, according to Gierzynski, “those with higher education.” He notes that “we think we know how the media affects us,” but in truth, it controls us more than we know.
Anthony Gierzynski
Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There is too much fraternizing with the enemy.
Henry Kissinger
Schools themselves aren't creating the opportunity gap: the gap is already large by the time children enter kindergarten and does not grow as children progress through school. The gaps in cognitive achievement by level of maternal education that we observe at age 18-powerful predictors of who goes to college and who does not - are mostly present at age 6when children enter school. Schooling plays only a minor role in alleviating or creating test score gaps.
Robert D. Putnam
Ultimately politics in a democracy reflects values much more than it shapes them.
Arnold A. Rogow
It will be seen how subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and suffering, only lose their antithetical character, and thus their existence, as such antitheses in the social condition; it will be seen how the resolution of the theoretical antitheses is only possible in a practical way, by virtue of the practical energy of men. Their resolution is therefore by no means merely a problem of knowledge, but a real problem of life, which philosophy could not solve precisely because it conceived this problem as merely a theoretical one.
Robert C. Tucker
A century is about events. A decade is about people.
George Friedman
Superior might does not guarantee success, especially in a war where political considerations dominate.
Richard H. Shultz Jr.
During my stay in the United States, I witnessed the spontaneous formation of committees in a country for the pursuit and prosecution of a man who had committed a great crime. In Europe, a criminal is an unhappy man who is struggling for his life against the agents of power, whilst the people are merely a spectator of the conflict: in America, he is looked upon as an enemy of the human race, and the whole of mankind is against him.
Alexis de Tocqueville
The reduced sense of responsibility and the absence of effective volition in turn explain the ordinary citizen's ignorance and lack of judgement in matters of domestic and foreign policy which are if anything more shocking in the case of educated people and of people who are successfully active in non-political walks of life than it is with uneducated people in humble stations.
Joseph Alois Schumpeter
And history teaches this iron law of revolutions: the more extensive the eradication of existing authority, the more its successors must rely on naked power to establish themselves. For,in the end,legitimacy involves an acceptance of authority without compulsion; its absence turns every contest into a test of strength.
Henry Kissinger
The wolf reintroduction has gone so well that, somewhat ironically, the wolves are now threatened by their own success. Indeed, virtually all the conditions for strong public support that were evident in the early years of the program remain intact. The scientific and economic studies cited above support the original predictions of benefits, and agency officials remain committed to the policy. Yet some political actors remain hostile to the program. As NPS management assistant Sacklin said, "No amount of good science will stop a politician.
William R. Lowry
paying taxes is a cheap price for a quiet conscience—much cheaper than actually having to get involved in the lives of their fellow citizens.
Charles Murray
influence flows across networks up to three degrees away. What your friends’ friends eat or do or think will influence what you eat or do or think—but further connections will not.
Anne-Marie Slaughter
Democracy is in conflict with individual freedom.
Bruno Leoni
Nations as well as men require time to learn, whatever may be their intelligence or zeal.
Alexis de Tocqueville
There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were those of Rome's allies; and if Rome had no allies, then allies would be invented. When it was utterly impossible to contrive such an interest—why, then it was the national honor that had been insulted. The fight was always invested with an aura of legality. Rome was always being attacked by evil-minded neighbors, always fighting for a breathing space. The whole world was pervaded by a host of enemies, and it was manifestly Rome's duty to guard against their indubitably aggressive designs. They were enemies who only waited to fall on the Roman people.
Joseph Alois Schumpeter
While you and I are allowed the luxury of our pain, president isn't. A president must take into account how his citizens feel and he must manage them and lead them, but he must not succumb to personal feelings. His job is to maintain a ruthless sense of proportion while keeping the coldness of his calculation to himself.
George Friedman
One has to understand that equality ends up by infiltrating the world of politics as it does everywhere else. It would be impossible to imagine men forever unequal in one respect, yet equal in others; they must, in the end, come to be equal in all.Now, I am aware of only two means of establishing equality in the world of politics: rights have to be granted to every citizen or to none.
Alexis de Tocqueville
In the Gaia theory air, water, and soil are major components of one central organism, planet Earth. What we typically think of as life - the plants and animals that inhabit the earth - has evolved merely to regulate the chemistry of the biosphere. Humans are insignificant participants, far less important to the life cycle than termites. Even the imbalance that we have created by adding massive quantities of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere may be brought back to acceptable levels by other organisms functioning in their capacity to correct excesses.
David Easton
These diverse effects of slavery and freedom are easily understood: … the men in Kentucky [neither] have zeal nor enlightenment … cross over into Ohio in order to utilize their industry and to be able to exercise it without shame … in Kentucky, masters make slaves work without being obliged to pay them, but they receive little fruit from their efforts, while the money that they would give to free workers would be recovered with interest from the value of their labors.
Alexis de Tocqueville
The great presidents never forget the principle of the republic and seek to preserve and enhance them – in the long run– without undermining the needs of the moment. Bad presidents simply do what is expedient, heedless of principles. But the worst presidents are those who adhere to the principles regardless of what the fortunes of the moment demand.
George Friedman
You can surmount the obstacles in your path if you are determined courageous and hard-working. Never be fainthearted. Be resolute but never bitter.... Permit no one to dissuade you from pursuing the goals you set for yourselves. Do not fear to pioneer to venture down new paths of endeavor.
Ralph J. Bunche
In running over the pages of our history for seven hundred years, we shall scarcely find a single great event which has not promoted equality of condition. The Crusades and the English wars decimated the nobles and divided their possessions: the municipal corporations introduced democratic liberty into the bosom of feudal monarchy; the invention of fire-arms equalized the vassal and the noble on the field of battle; the art of printing opened the same resources to the minds of all classes; the post-office brought knowledge alike to the door of the cottage and to the gate of the palace; and Protestantism proclaimed that all men are alike able to find the road to heaven. The discovery of America opened a thousand new paths to fortune, and led obscure adventurers to wealth and power.
Alexis de Tocqueville
The weakest would be put out of service rather than be allowed to compromise the whole system.
Frances McCall Rosenbluth
Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry interests, in one word, so anti-poetic, as the life of a man in the United States.
Alexis de Tocqueville
The world became more aware that America-despite being the hope of many who have the personal drive and ambition to become part of the "American dream"-is beset by serious operational challenges: a massive and growing national debt, widening social inequality, a cornucopian culture that worships materialism, a financial system given to greedy speculation, and a polarized political system
Zbigniew Brzeziński
It is, indeed, one of the basic moral blindspots of American conservatism that its intellectual and leadership energy have never been focused in a proactive way on America's racial-caste legacy. This represents a fundamental moral crisis of modern American conservatism.... American conservatives typically ignored the authoritarian and violent racial-caste practices and values arrayed against black Americans in southern states where the vast majority of blacks live. On the other hand, American conservatives have, throughout this century, often embraced freedom movements elsewhere in the world --in Europe, Latin America, East Asia-- but always firmly resisting a proactive embrace of the black American civil rights movement as a bona fide freedom movement fully worthy of their support. So it is in the shadow of this dismal record of mainstream American conservatism vis-a-vis black Americans' long and arduous quest for equality of status that new black conservatives have emerged.
Martin Kilson
It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation-states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.
Samuel P. Huntington
The percentage of people qualifying for federal disability benefits because they are unable to work rose from 0.7 percent of the size of the labor force in 1960 to 5.3% in 2010.
Charles Murray
The conservative does not defend the Old Regime; he speaks on behalf of old regimes—in the family, the factory, the field. There, ordinary men, and sometimes women, get to play the part of little lords and ladies, supervising their underlings as if they all belong to a feudal estate . . . The task of this type of conservatism---democratic feudalism—-becomes clear: surround these old regimes with fences and gates, protect them from meddlesome intruders like the state or a social movement, while descanting on mobility and innovation, freedom and the future.
Corey Robin
Collective violence has flowed regularly out of the central political processes of western countries... The oppressed have struck in the name of justice, the privileged in the name of order, the in-between in the name of fear.
Charles Tilly
90% of the politicians give the other 10% a bad reputation.
Henry Kissinger
The owners and top managers of most news media organizations tend to be conservative and Republican. This is hardly surprising. The shareholders and executives of multi-billion-dollar corporations are not very interested in undermining the free enterprise system, for example, income from offended advertisers. These owners and managers ultimately decide which reporters, newscasters, and editors to hire or fire, promote or discourage. Journalists who want to get a head, therefore, may have to come to terms with the policies of the people who own and run media businesses.
Edward S. Greenberg
Some Westerners […] have argued that the West does not have problems with Islam but only with violent Islamist extremists. Fourteen hundred years of history demonstrate otherwise.
Samuel P. Huntington
The final greatness of the presidency lies in the truth that it is not just an office of incredible power but a breeding ground of indestructible myth.
Clinton Rossiter
The historian assesses that the investment of the wealthy classes in the Bank of England wedded them to the fate of the nation as a whole and to the maintenance of its stability.
Walter Russell Mead
Freedom works.
Jeane Kirkpatrick
History is a better guide than good intentions.
Jeane Kirkpatrick
All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.
Alexis de Tocqueville