Carl Schmitt

"Enemies need not be evil; they need only be existentially different."

"The state maintains order through the potential for violence, not through reason alone."

"Partisan conflict reflects fundamental disagreement about the nature of the political order itself."

"Freedom without order is chaos; order without freedom is tyranny."

"The concept of the people is never politically innocent."

"Sovereignty cannot be divided; it belongs to whoever makes the final decision."

"Every system of law ultimately rests on a founding act of violence."

"The stronger party has always determined the form of international law."

"Representation is not a reflection of the people's will but its production."

"The exception reveals the truth that the norm conceals."

"Politics cannot be reduced to economics without ceasing to be politics."

"The nation-state emerged from the need to concentrate power for decisive action."

"Bureaucracy attempts to eliminate decision through procedure, but decision always returns."

"Civil war is the endpoint of liberal ideology, for it reveals what liberalism denies."

"Justice demands not equality but proportion and the proper ordering of distinctions."

"The decision on the exception is precisely what the rule cannot contain."

"Modern revolution attempts to escape history by denying that tradition has any claim."

"Pacifism is itself a political position that presupposes a particular view of the enemy."

"The grand alliance against a common enemy obscures deeper incompatibilities."

"Legitimacy cannot be manufactured through proper procedures alone."

"The protection of minorities becomes politically problematic when they refuse assimilation."

"Every claim to universality masks a particular political interest."

"The attempt to eliminate the enemy from politics through law merely displaces conflict elsewhere."

"Power that cannot defend its own existence is not truly sovereign."

"Fascism was an attempt to create a new form of politics that liberalism could not contain."

"The measure of a state's strength is its capacity to make binding decisions in crisis."

"Technology transforms the nature of warfare but does not eliminate the friend-enemy distinction."

"A constitution that cannot be suspended is a constitution that has abdicated power."

"The concept of humanity serves to dissolve all political distinctions."

"Decisionistic thinking recognizes that all order ultimately rests on a free decision."