Anton Pannekoek Quotes

The essence of government is control, or the attempt to control.

The state, the state apparatus, is not an abstraction.

Rulers come and go; governments end and forms of government change; but sovereignty survives.

The British Government

Men such as they are, very naturally seek money or power; and power because it is as good as money,--the “spoils,” so called, “of office.” And why not? For they aspire to the highest, and this, in their sleep-walking, they dream is highest. Wake them, and they shall quit the false good, and leap to the true, and leave governments to clerks and desks.

Parliament of Parliaments

The State is a collection of officials, different for difference purposes, drawing comfortable incomes so long as the status quo is preserved. The only alteration they are likely to desire in the status quo is an increase of bureaucracy and the power of bureaucrats.

Elected presidents are for countries.

Politics is activity in relation to power.

Democracy is a good client.

I am the government.

Politicians love regulating. That's part of the whole power structure.

What is government itself but the great reflection of human nature.

The power which a multiple millionaire, who may be my neighbor and perhaps my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest "functionaire" possesses who wields the coercive power of the state, and on whose desecration it depends whether and how I am allowed to live or to work.

I have several times suggested that what I call the “Establishment” in this country is today more powerful than ever before. By “Establishment” I do not mean only the centers of official power – though they are certainly part of it – but rather the whole matrix of official and social relations within which power is exercised ... the “Establishment” can be seen at work in the activities of, not only the Prime Minister, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Earl Marshal, but of such lesser mortals as the Chairman of the Arts Council, the Director-General of the BBC, and even the editor of the Times Literary Supplement, not to mention dignitaries like Lady Violet Bonham Carter.

What is politics but business?

My power comes from the military.

I promise you the country would be in real trouble if I were really in the White House.

Whether the state be Marxist or capitalist, it makes no difference. The dominant ideology is that of sovereignty.

The art of government is the organization of idolatry. The bureaucracy consists of functionaries; the aristocracy, of idols; the democracy, of idolaters. The populace cannot understand the bureaucracy: it can only worship the national idols.

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

Constitutions are in politics what paper money is in commerce. They afford great facilities and conveniences. But we must not attribute to them that value which really belongs to what they represent. They are not power, but symbols of power, and will, in an emergency, prove altogether useless unless the power for which they stand be forthcoming.

The president has to govern.

The office of the presidency is what's important, no matter who's in it.

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.