Politics and Power

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

The class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.

Hegel says somewhere that all great events and personalities in world history reappear in one fashion or another. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.

Is it not passing brave to be a king,

I have dedicated my life to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for, and to see realized. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

It is much safer for a prince to be feared than loved, if he is to fail in one of the two.

The prince must be a fox, therefore, to recognize the traps and a lion to frighten the wolves.

Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries—for heavy ones they cannot.

Much of … his global thinking is, no matter how you slice it, still globaloney.

The great and chief end, therefore, of men’s uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property.

The only way by which any one divests himself of his natural liberty and puts on the bonds of civil society is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community.

Man being … by nature all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate, and subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent.

The end of law is, not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom.

Whatsoever … [man] removes out of the state that nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.

To give victory to the right, not bloody bullets, but peaceful ballots only, are necessary.

The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes.

How is the world ruled and how do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read.

Power is the great aphrodisiac.

Power without responsibility: the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.

Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.

Lenin was right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency.