Political Theory Exam 2 - Quotes

”For the gap between how people actually behave and how they ought to behave is so great that anyone who ignores everyday reality in order to live up to an ideal will soon discover he has been taught how to destroy himself, not how to preserve himself.”

Machiavelli

“For anyone who wants to act the part of a good man in all circumstances will bring about his own ruin, for those he has to deal with will not all be good. So it is necessary for a ruler, if he wants to hold on to power, to learn how not to be good, and to know when it is and when it is not necessary to use this knowledge.”

Machiavelli

“I recognize every ruler should want to be thought of as compassionate and not cruel. Nevertheless, I want to warn you about being compassionate...”

Machiavelli

Just like a river, “the same thing happens with fortune: she demonstrates her power where precautions have not been taken to resist it; she directs her attacks where she knows banks and barriers have not been built to hold her.”

Machiavelli

“For this is a general rule without exceptions: A ruler who is not himself wise cannot be given good advice.”

Machiavelli

“Organized domination, which calls for continuous administration, requires that human conduct be conditioned to obedience toward those who claim to be the bearers of legitimate power. On the other hand, by virtue of this obedience, organized domination requires the control of those material goods, which in a given case, are necessary for the use of physical violence.”

Max Weber

“Devotion to the charisma of the prophet, or the leader in war, or to the great demagogue in the ecclesia or in parliament, means that the leader is personally recognized as the innerly “called” leader of men. Men do not obey him by virtue of tradition or statue, but because they believe in him.”

Max Weber

Passion as devotion to a cause, “in the sense of matter of factness, of passionate devotion for a cause, to the god or demon who is overlord.”

Max Weber

“...he who lets himself in for politics, that is, for power and force as means, contracts with diabolical powers and for his action it is not true that good can follow only from good and evil from evil, but that often the opposite is true. Anyone who fails to see this is, indeed, a political infant.”

Max Weber

“Here is the moral politician: it is by his dirty hands that we know him. If he were a moral man and nothing else, his hands would not be dirty; if he were a politician and nothing else, he would pretend that they were clean.”

Michael Walzer

“hero but a tragic hero” and “With full consciousness of what he is doing, he does bad in order to do good, and surrenders his soul.”

Michael Walzer

“Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man...continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

Thomas Hobbes

“The passions that incline men to peace are FEAR OF DEATH; desire of such things as are necessary to a commodious living; and a hope by their industry to obtain them.”

Thomas Hobbes

“Justice therefore, that is to say, keeping of covenant, is a rule of reason, by which we are forbidden to do anything destructive to our life; and consequently law of nature.”

Thomas Hobbes

“The laws of nature oblige in foro interno, that is to say, they bind to a desire they should take place, but in foro externo, that is, to the putting them in act, not always.”

Thomas Hobbes