Bernard Crick (1929 – 2008)
British political theorist and democratic socialist whose views were often summarised as "politics is ethics done in public".
To Marx the claim of the theory of ideology is that all doctrine is a derivative of social circumstance.
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.
Politics has rough manners, but it is a very useful thing.
BOREDOM with established truths is a great enemy of free men.
Quite apart from the prestige of technology, people do, after all, prefer a simple idea to a complex one.
Too often the revolutionary is the man who must create order in the chaos left by failed conservatives.
Free men stick their necks out.
Where government is impossible, politics is impossible.
In an abstract but real sense, Marxism arose through the breakdown first of religion and then of 'reason' as single sources of authority.
There is no great danger to politics in the desire for certainty at any price.
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.
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.
The attempt to politicize everything is the destruction of politics. When everything is seen as relevant to politics, than politics has in fact become totalitarian.
The unique character of political activity lies, quite literally, in its publicity.
A politics of vengeance is not politics. Revenge is a recklessness towards the future in a vain attempt to make the present abolish a suffering which is already past.
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.
Totalitarianism surpasses autocracy.
Certainly if the fundamental problem of society is that demands are infinite and resources are always limited, politics, not economics is the master science.
The idea of a rational bureaucracy, of skill, merit, and consistency, is essential to all modern states.
The politician has no more use for pride than Falstaff had for honour.