W. H. Auden Quotes

Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated

The belief that politics can be scientific must inevitably produce tyrannies. Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation.

Modern political science started in the late nineteenth century as a branch of history.

I hold them [politics] to be subject to laws as fixed as matter itself, and to be as fit a subject for the application of the highest intellectual power.

Politics are the divine science, after all.

She didn't know a lot about politics – yet – but she'd learned enough in her history classes to know politics could always be counted on to make a bad situation worse.

The belief that politics can be scientific must inevitably produce tyrannies. Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation. Empirical politics must be kept in bounds by democratic institutions, which leave it up to the subjects of the experiment to say whether it shall be tried, and to stop it if they dislike it, because, in politics, there is a distinction, unknown to science, between Truth and Justice.

There is no such thing as political science, but there are tenancies so strong that they might as well be called laws of nature.

A political theory seeks to find from history the limits of the politically possible.

Government is not an exact science.

… the science of government is an experimental science, and that, like all other experimental sciences, it is generally in a state of progression. No man is so obstinate an admirer of the old times as to deny that medicine, surgery, botany, chemistry, engineering, navigation, are better understood now than in any former age. We conceive that it is the same with political science

I am a political human being. I have - that's one of my interests. I studied political science in college. I was actually going to get my Ph.D. in poli-sci. And a lot of my material from early on in my career dealt with politics, so I've always considered myself as somebody who enjoys political humor. So I'm not going to stop.

I was a political science major in college because that's where my head was.

I studied political science at the Ecole de Sciences Politiques in Paris.

Politics - I don't know why, but they seem to have a tendency to separate us, to keep us from one another, while nature is always and ever making efforts to bring us together.

Fascism and communism have not entirely disappeared but have been sidelined certainly, and liberal democracy has come to be accepted, in theory at least, around the world, if not always in practice.

Politics is, for me, forgive and -as you may have heard- sometimes forget.

Politics is made up of two words: "Poli," which is Greek for "many," and "tics," which are bloodsucking insects.

Politics is history in the making.

It's a funny thing, I think people meet us and they assume that we know a lot more about politics than we actually do. People will really get into it. I'm like, I don't really know a lot about tariff reform or export trade reform. That's really not something I know about.

To be honest, politics is so weird. I think it's more heavy than religion.

The student of politics therefore as well as the psychologist must study the nature of the soul.

Politics is not a science, as the professors are apt to suppose. It is an art.

Political science without biography is a form of taxidermy.

To an intellectual who is adrift in politics, a theory is an aim; to a true politician his theory is a boundary.