Carl Schmitt

"The moment of constituent power is always revolutionary."

"Peace is impossible between unequals."

"Authority requires recognition, not merely assertion."

"The question of legitimacy precedes all constitutionalism."

"Every state reserves the right to define the exception."

"History is the realm of contingency, not necessity."

"The political cannot be abolished; it can only be repressed."

"The exceptional case is more interesting than the rule, for the rule proves nothing while the exception proves everything."

"Every legal order rests ultimately on a decision, not on a norm."

"Sovereignty is he who decides on the exception."

"The state of exception is not a space outside the law; it reveals the structure of law itself."

"All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts."

"Politics is not primarily about morality or economics, but about distinguishing friend from enemy."

"The enemy is our own question as form."

"A political entity cannot abandon the friend-enemy distinction without ceasing to be political."

"The demand to give up war is equivalent to the demand to give up politics itself."

"Liberalism has never been able to develop its own theory of the state and sovereignty."

"Democracy is not primarily concerned with equality of conditions but with homogeneity of the people."

"The constitution is not merely a law but a fundamental political decision."

"Legality without legitimacy is merely organized force."

"Dictatorship is a conscious, systematic method of operating, not merely an exception."

"Law is always an expression of the will to power."

"The victors write history, and thus they write the law."

"Neutrality is impossible; every position is ultimately a political position."

"The church cannot be a political actor without losing its spiritual character."

"Modern warfare has made the old distinctions between combatants and civilians obsolete."

"Technology does not liberate humanity from political decision; it merely displaces the burden."

"Ideology is the attempt to escape from concrete political reality through abstraction."

"The rule of law is a myth that conceals the exercise of power."

"Every constitution presupposes a constituent power that cannot itself be constituted."