Political theorist quotes

Explore thought-provoking quotes by influential political theorists who have shaped our understanding of government, power, and society.

Hell is truth seen too late.

- Thomas Hobbes

The life of man in a state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

- Thomas Hobbes

It's not the pace of life I mind. It's the sudden stop at the end.

- Thomas Hobbes

Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.

- Hannah Arendt

There is hardly a better way to avoid discussion than by releasing an argument from the control of the present and by saying that only the future will reveal its merits.

- Hannah Arendt

The true goal of totalitarian propaganda is not persuasion, but organization of the policy. What convinces masses are not facts, and not even invented facts, but only the consistency of the system of which they are presumably part.

- Hannah Arendt

The point is that both Hitler and Stalin held out promises of stability in order to hide their intention of creating a state of permanent instability.

- Hannah Arendt

The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist.

- Hannah Arendt

The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.

- Hannah Arendt

One of the greatest advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive.

- Hannah Arendt

Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow.

- Hannah Arendt

In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.

- Hannah Arendt

For such is the nature of man, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; Yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves: For they see their own wit at hand, and other mens at a distance.

- Thomas Hobbes

You can never plan the future by the past.

- Edmund Burke

Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.

- Edmund Burke

Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

- Edmund Burke

People never give up their liberties but under some delusion.

- Edmund Burke

Never, no, never did Nature say one thing and Wisdom say another.

- Edmund Burke

Men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

- Edmund Burke

It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice, tell me I ought to do.

- Edmund Burke