Politics Quotes

"The legitimacy of political decisions depends on their justifiability to all affected citizens."

"The friend-enemy distinction is the fundamental concept from which all others derive meaning."

"Law and power cannot be permanently separated; they are intertwined in the political reality."

"The normalization of exception marks the end of constitutional government."

"The protection of life is often invoked to justify its suspension."

"Dictatorship is the price societies pay for continuous legal order."

"Liberal democracy's fatal weakness is its refusal to recognize the friend-enemy distinction."

"The decision precedes the norm; the norm derives from the decision."

"A system that cannot identify its enemy is a system in dissolution."

"The preservation of order sometimes requires abandoning the rules that constitute order."

"The liberal attempt to depoliticize cannot succeed; the political persists."

"The boundary between friend and enemy determines all political relationships."

"Pacifism is itself a political position with violent implications for others."

"Enemies can exist between groups sharing identical formal legal systems."

"Democratic procedures cannot resolve the problem of who legitimately decides."

"Totalitarianism emerges when exception becomes the permanent operating principle."

"Liberal institutions assume a consensus that politics fundamentally denies."

"The friend-enemy grouping transcends economics, morality, and aesthetics."

"Constitutional democracy presumes stability that political reality often denies."

"Institutional design cannot eliminate the problem of who decides in fundamental matters."

"The boundaries of political community are always contested and require enforcement."

"Democratic institutions function only when underlying conflict remains manageable."

"The enemy is always external to one's own political community by definition."

"The political order survives through its ability to identify and neutralize enemies."

"The attempt to create a perfect society is the enemy of a good one."

"Politics is the art of the possible, not the science of the ideal."

"Politics fails when it becomes ideology."

"Politics should be founded upon moral principles."

"Civil disobedience can be justified when legal remedies fail and democratic institutions are not fundamentally sound."

"Democratic legitimacy requires that laws be justifiable to all citizens as free and equal."