Martin Jacques Quotes

For 'The Grace of Kings,' I read Han Dynasty historical records in Classical Chinese, which allowed me to get a sense of the complexity of the politics and the 'surprisingly modern' reactions of the historical figures to recurrent problems of state administration.

There have been 50 or 60 books written about Empress Orchid, but none of them bothered to really examine the period in China when she lived. I was taught that she was evil; it's in all the textbooks.

The political power of the Country must fall eventually into the hands of certain great families as it always has done in other republics.

At the age of fifteen my grandmother became the concubine of a warlord general.

The church, inserted and active in human society and in history, does not exist in order to exercise political power or to govern the society.

Certain it is that their power increased always in an exact proportion to the weakness of the Caliphate, and, without doubt, in some of the most distracted periods of the Arabian rule, the Hebrew Princes rose into some degree of local and temporary importance.

Indeed, the existence of class, of social hierarchy, is as old as man himself. It prevails in the jungle where strength determines hierarchy; among men, it has also been savagely the same, whereby rulers vested with power through personal combat, or through lineal heritage as in the case of royalty, ravage their subjects.

We had thought you had been ruler over your land ... but now we perceive that there be other men that do rule, and not men but peasants and merchants ... and you flow in your maidenly estate like a maid.

A revolution [is] not a single act, but rather a chain of collisions and conflicts with the ruling class, which is never ready to submit itself to the will of a democratic majority, but rather defends its predominant position with all means at its disposal, with the help of the powers which the state has built up—the army, the police, the courts and the church

We short history; the Chinese long history.

For a very long time, and among a large number of peoples, political power has belonged to the owners of the land

Russian elites believe that he [President Vladimir Putin] serves the same function as the Czars of old, keeping diverse political clans and their leaders (the boyars) in balance, preventing the civil war or chaos that a country of Russia’s vast size and relative emptiness would face if it were left open to competition by those who retain loyal militias.

High-level political wives are by no means new. In the 18th and 19th centuries, when patricians dominated British political life, it was common for politicians' spouses to play an active political role.

Individual liberty is individual power, and as the power of a community is a mass compounded of individual powers, the nation which enjoys the most freedom must necessarily be in proportion to its numbers the most powerful nation.

We are unalterably opposed to any class government, whether it be the existing dictatorship of the plutocracy or the dictatorship of the proletariat. Both are essentially undemocratic and un-American. Both are destructive of private initiative liberty.

...a state is not the same thing as a society ... A state is an organization of power on a territorial basis.

It cannot be denied with truth, that this new constitution is, in its first principles, most highly and dangerously, oligarchic.

Staggering poverty and crippling inequality at hole do not necessarily prevent countries from trying to project their power abroad.

Power is the true reserve currency in international affairs.

What really matters for great powers is power—national economic and military strength—and that speaks loudly and clearly for itself.

Grand strategies are not nearly so important as grand strategists like to think, because countries tend to be judged by their actions, not on their words…. History shows that grand strategies do not alter the trajectory of great power politics all that much.

All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State

This concord should be as profound as our empires are great, for we know that no other state will ever appear to rival our empires.

You have a political elite that has been in power since 1979. Typically what happens with this elite, and it has happened in Iran, is that they get more and more out of touch with the realities of the ordinary citizens.

What is new in our time is the increased power of the authorities to enforce their prejudices.