Bernard Crick Quotes

When the citizens at large administer the state for the common interest, the government is called by the generic name - a constitution.

"Government," says Swift, "is a plain thing, and fitted to the capacity of many heads."

In some dim beginning, man created the institution of government as a convenience for himself. And, ever since that time, government has been doing its best to become an inconvenience.

It is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal.

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants.

The State is not, as many political scientists would make it, an inanimate thing; it consists of people, human beings, each of whom operates under an inner compulsion to get the most out of life with the least expenditure of labor.

It will be said that great societies cannot exist without government.

What is the purpose of the government? When you examine most political debates, you usually find that question at the bedrock. What makes a government good? What makes one effective? What is government supposed to do, and what shouldn’t it do? The reason we disagree so much about politics is often because we hold different theories about what the purpose of government is.

Man is ... a political animal.

Government ... is neither business, nor technology, nor applied science. It is the art of making men live together in peace and with reasonable happiness.

Whoever desires to found a nation and give it laws must begin by assuming that all men are bad and always ready to display their evil nature.

A dominion then, whose well-being depends on any man's good faith, and whose affairs cannot be properly administered, unless those who are engaged in them will act honestly, will be very unstable. On the contrary, to insure its permanence, its public affairs should be so ordered, that those who administer them, whether guided by reason or passion, cannot be led to act treacherously or basely.

It proceeds from a consummate ignorance in politicks, to think that a number of men agreeing together can make and hold a commonwealth, before nature has prepared the way…

I did not love politics. As a matter of fact, I hated politics. I loved governing which is … a different thing.

Ultimately, political order does not generate itself.

I think good governance and good politics can go together.

I would like to have insights into things like government, all those big ideas that you brought up that I simply don't have ideas about. I would like to be able to since so many people discuss them, but I don't want to work at them. I don't think my ambition is that strong in that direction.

Our political experiment of democracy, the last refuge of cheap misgovernment.

Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man.

Who so taketh in hand to frame any state or government ought to presuppose that all men are evil, and at occasions will show themselves so to be.

You cannot have democracy without the institutions. You cannot have a democracy that is built on the moods of self-interested people.

Laws and systems of polity always begin by recognizing the relations they find already existing between individuals.

Does it seem to you impossible to imagine anything more inextricable than the social contract, when you think of the frightful number of relations that it must regulate -- something like squaring the circle, or finding perpetual motion? That is the reason why, wearied of the struggle, you fall back on absolutism and force.

The state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good.

Few consider how much we are indebted to government, because few can represent how wretched mankind would be without it.