Carl Schmitt

"The modern state achieved its independence by monopolizing legitimate force."

"Discourse about law obscures the will that produces law."

"The exception is not a deviation from the rule but its most truthful expression."

"Democratic majorities have no inherent limit to their power over minorities."

"The attempt to transcend politics through cosmopolitan law is itself a political project."

"Sovereignty means the capacity to say no to the entire international order."

"The state of nature and the state of exception are analogous concepts."

"Liberalism destroyed the feudal order but could not establish its own stable political form."

"Every act of judgment contains within it an element of discretion that rules cannot eliminate."

"The enemy is not someone to be convinced but someone to be overcome."

"Pluralism is acceptable only when no group questions the fundamental political order."

"The concept of international law presupposes a balance of power, not universal norms."

"Morality becomes political the moment it demands enforcement through law."

"The state must maintain the monopoly on the decision about its own death."

"Normative claims cannot escape their origins in contingent political decisions."

"The friend-enemy distinction persists because political existence persists."

"Revolution always assumes that the existing order has lost its legitimacy."

"The constitution is a decision about the fundamental character of the political community."

"Partisan conflict becomes civil war when both sides claim to represent the legitimate order."

"The stronger conceals its power through appeals to universal principles."

"Every political system requires a core of shared enemy perceptions to maintain unity."

"The exception proves the rule by showing what the rule presupposes."

"Politics cannot be eliminated through technical expertise; it can only be displaced."

"The nation is not a natural entity but a political creation."

"Law without the possibility of exception is law that has surrendered to mere administration."

"The concept of legality serves to legitimize the existing distribution of power."

"Crisis reveals what normality conceals about the nature of political order."

"The state's right to make war flows from the same source as its right to make law."

"Neutrality in fundamental conflicts is impossible; it is merely the choice of the existing order."

"The modern attempt to eliminate the exception through universal law must ultimately fail."