Political Structures Quotes

For thousands of years, until about 1850, you see humans accumulating more and more power by the invention of new technologies and by new systems of organization in the economy and in politics, but you don't see any real improvement in the well-being of the average person.

There are still two forms besides democracy and oligarchy; one of them is universally recognized and included among the four principal forms of government, which are said to be (1) monarchy, (2) oligarchy, (3) democracy, and (4) the so-called aristocracy or government of the best. But there is also a fifth, which retains the generic name of polity or constitutional government.

A democracy is ... accounted the meanest and worst of all forms of government.

The greater part of the governments on earth may be termed monarchical aristocracies, or hereditary dominions independent of the people.

We should not pretend that we can remake the domestic structures of governments all over the world.

Of governments there are said to be only two forms - democracy and oligarchy. For aristocracy is considered to be a kind of oligarchy, as being the rule of a few, and the so-called constitutional government to be really a democracy.

It will be proper to take a review of the several sources from which governments have arisen, and on which they have been founded.

Ideology... is indispensable in any society if men are to be formed, transformed and equipped to respond to the demands of their conditions of existence.

What can we expect from nations still less advanced in civilization than the [Ancient] Greeks?

Mankind has failed miserably in its effort to devise a rational system of government. [...] The art of government is the exclusive possession of quacks and frauds. It has been so since the earliest days, and it will probably remain so until the end of time.

All the States and Governments by which men are or ever have been ruled, have been and are either Republics or Princedoms.

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

Democracy is more than just having free elections. It's having political structures.

Most civilizational advancements occurred under empires.

The other day, someone told me the difference between a democracy and a people's democracy. It's the same difference between a jacket and a straitjacket.

We must understand the motives and forces of our time and analyze their structure from three points of view: the material, the functional, and the spiritual. We must make clear in what respects our epoch differs from others and in what respects it is similar.

Peoples have come to experience that political structures and divisions of power are not immutable. Nor will they perceive the distribution of wealth and resources between nations to be unalterably ordained by heaven and incapable of drastic rearrangement by the less than gentle manipulation of man.

I do think the Cubans have to change some of the political structures there and allow critical voices, for their own sakes, because unless there is accountability the revolution will totally atrophy.

Women's Studies can amount simply to compensatory history; too often they fail to challenge the intellectual and political structures that must be challenged if women as a group are ever to come into collective, nonexclusionary freedom.

Every time economic and technical development takes a step forward, forces emerge which attempt to create political forms for what, on the economic-technical plane, has already more or less become reality.

Perhaps it's time to start examining countries that have made democracy work while still having some kind of the same relationship in covenant with their population. Perhaps we need to look at the Scandinavian countries, or Canada, or something else, but whatever we have now, I think we just have to acknowledge, ain't workin.

All government is an evil, but, of the two form's of that evil, democracy or monarchy, the sounder is monarchy; the more able to do its will, democracy.

The problem to be solved is, not what form of government is perfect, but which of the forms is least imperfect.

All such men are, or ought to be, agreed, that simple governments are despotisms; and of all despotisms, a democracy, though the least durable, is the most violent.

So far, the biggest regret I have in regards to the world of 'Red Queen' is that I didn't get to world-build enough. I don't think I did enough work explaining how the world came to be, and while I'm planning to go more into it, I'm a greedy writer, and I'm always going to wish I had more room to delve into the complexities of a fantasy realm.