Carl Schmitt

"Sovereignty cannot be shared; it can only be exercised by a single center of decision."

"The people never speak with one voice except through their political representatives."

"International law is ultimately the law of the stronger enforced against the weaker."

"Every constitution embodies answers to existential questions about the political community."

"The attempt to transcend politics is itself the most dangerous political project."

"Legitimacy cannot be derived from procedure alone; it requires substantive agreement."

"The exception is the truth; the rule is merely what the exception permits to exist."

"Political theory that ignores the possibility of conflict is not truly political."

"The state maintains its monopoly on force through continuous exercise and credible threat."

"Every claim to neutrality masks alignment with the existing order of power."

"The constitution that suspends itself in the exception reveals its true nature."

"Enemies are created through political action, not discovered as natural facts."

"The rule persists only so long as the exception permits it to do so."

"The exception is more interesting than the rule; the rule proves nothing, the exception proves everything."

"Sovereignty is he who decides on the exception."

"Every legal order rests at some point on a decision that cannot itself be derived from the legal system."

"The friend-enemy distinction is the highest intensity of a union and separation."

"Political concepts all have a polemical meaning; they are focused on a concrete adversary."

"A theology that does not take evil seriously is worthless."

"State of exception has become the rule in modern governance."

"Liberalism has never solved the problem of how one should deal with the enemy."

"The political is the most intense and intimate of all associations."

"War is the continuation of politics by other means, but politics emerges from the friend-enemy distinction."

"Legal validity and historical reality are not the same thing."

"Every genuine political theory presupposes the reality of the enemy."

"Strength comes not from agreement but from the clarity of distinction."

"The concept of the state presupposes the concept of the political."

"Decision is the essence of sovereignty, not law itself."

"Modernity is characterized by the blurring of distinctions that once were clear."

"Normality and abnormality are both within the province of political decision."