20th-century Political Scientist Quotes

Condoleezza Rice
George F. Kennan
Raymond Aron
Herbert A. Simon
Francis Fukuyama
Samuel P. Huntington
Benedict Anderson

When a robot dies, you don't have to write a letter to its mother,

P. W. Singer
P. W. Singer
When a planner speaks of implementing goals rationally, he implies that it is possible to demonstrate logically and experimentally the relationship between the proposed means and the ends they are intended to further.

The Kennedy home was a place of much action and laughter, a lively, brawling mob of children overseen by a mother who knew when to look the other way.

I remain a religious agnostic, but, unlike most atheists, I not only am not hostile to traditional religion but consider it a highly valuable, not to say essential, social institution... I am convinced that the moral regeneration and repair of a frayed social fabric that this country so badly needs will not take place unless more people take their religion seriously.

Peace is not achievable as a direct object of purposeful behaviour.

Whose best and most fruitful gift was the power of admiration, which made it possible for me to learn. Now, as in my youth, I am looking up to the truly great creations of the past, which I see high above my own and which alone deserve the name of greatness.

Recent presidents have gone off on ad hoc adventures. They have set unattainable goal because they have framed the issue incorrectly, as they believed their own rhetoric.

All sciences are considered by their professors as equally significant; by the politicians, as equally incomprehensible; and by the military as equally expensive.

Space is only 80 miles from every person on earth — far closer than most people are to their own national capitals.

Social, political and economic institutions have become larger, considerably more complex and resourceful, and prima facie more important to collective life. Many of the major actors in modern economic and political systems are formal organizations, and the institutions of law and bureaucracy occupy a dominant role in contemporary life.

The theory of evolution is based on the struggle for life and the survival of the fittest. Yet cooperation is common between members of the same species and even between members of different species.

Political history is largely an account of mass violence and of the expenditure of vast resources to cope with mythical fears and hopes

Our fate is something which exists outside ourselves, and which once revealed expresses the meaning of our lives. Apart, however, from soothsayers who claim to have a means of foretelling exactly what will befall us, this kind of fate is only normally revealed after a life has ended. Only then can the meaning of that life be understood.

Remind yourself that the only thing you can truly control is you - and your reaction to what the world throws at you.

Right now, [the Israel lobby] has become a subject that you can barely talk about without people immediately trying to silence you, immediately trying to discredit you in various ways, such that no American politicians will touch this, which is quite remarkable when you consider how much Americans argue about every other controversial political issue. To me, this is a national security priority for us, and we ought to be having an open debate on it, not one where only one side is being heard from.

Foreign policy is like hitting a baseball: if you fail 70 percent of the time, you go to the Hall of Fame.

Robert Kagan
Robert Kagan
Why, if (as Boaz maintains) the liberty of a human being to own another should be trumped by equal human rights, the liberty to own large amounts of property should not also be trumped by equal human rights?

None of the people's wars of the sixties did very well, including the one in Vietnam. Vo Nguyen Giap himself has admitted a loss of 600,000 men between 1965 and 1968...Moreover, by about 1970 at least 80% of the day-to-day combat in South Vietnam was being carried on by regular NVA troops...Genuine black-pajama southern guerrillas had been decimated and amounted to no more than 20% of the communist fighting forces.

In France, every argument becomes a matter of principle; the practical results are relegated to second place.

Communism and socialism can be connected to a single major author—Marx—and assessed as deviations from, and implementations or negations of, Marx. Democracy is not amenable to a similar treatment; the towering, single major author on democracy does not exist.

The ultimate test of practical leadership is the realization of intended, real change that meets people's enduring needs.

I have lived half of my life in "Western society" and never encountered those principles [listed by the NYT as "Western"]. What is wrong with me. … So Mr. Bush stands for "gender equality, religious freedom, scientific inquiry and the rule of law" and I have never noticed?

As'ad AbuKhalil
As'ad AbuKhalil
A second point is that, within the limits of plausible argument, the most instructive comparisons (whether of difference or similarity) are those that surprise. No Japanese will be surprised by a comparison with China, since it has been made for centuries, the path is well trodden, and people usually have their minds made up already. But a comparison of Japan with Austria or Mexico might catch the reader off her guard.

Benedict Anderson
Benedict Anderson
Worldviews are more a mental security blanket than a serious effort to understand the world

Bryan Caplan
Bryan Caplan
When life becomes an extended picnic, with nothing of importance to do, ideas of greatness become an irritant. Such is the nature of the Europe syndrome.

Charles Murray
Charles Murray