20th-century Political Scientist Quotes

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

Racism has always been able to come up with a scientific veneer.

Even if a government can be constitutional without being democratic, it cannot be democratic without being constitutional.

Clinton Rossiter

Loyalty is an asset, independent and scarce, parceled out among different contestants for power. No ruling government or nonruling group enjoys absolute loyalty - no contestant can have the whole pie.

Wilson's analytical theory assumed that the natural and inevitable tendency in any system of government is to have recourse to some sovereign body that will exercise "ultimate supremacy" and have the last say in making collective decisions. It is in this sense that we speak of a government as have a monopoly over the legitimate exercise of authority and use of force in society. Indeed, much of contemporary political science is based on this presumption.

The missionaries of Christianity had said in effect: You have no right to live among us as Jews. The secular rulers who followed had proclaimed: You have no right to live among us. The German Nazis at last decreed: You have no right to live.

I began to appreciate that authentic truth is never simple and that any version of truth handed down from on high - whether by presidents, prime ministers, or archbishops - is inherently suspect. The powerful, I came to see, reveal truth only to the extent that it suits them.

Andrew Bacevich

In a fundamental sense, Alchian's theory of economic organizations is different from those of Coase or Simon. He disavows an explicit model of individual choice... and... offers a system-level explanation of organizational emergence, structure, and survival that is largely independent of decision making at the micro level... Yet it is precisely this independence of a distinct model of choice that ultimately renders it compatible with the individualistic theories of both Coase and Simon....

Power positions do not yield to arguments, however rationally and morally valid, but only to superior power.

Hans Morgenthau

Fascism... was the socialism of 'proletarian nations.'

A. James Gregor

Scientific discovery, when viewed in detail, is an excruciatingly slow and painful process.

Herbert A. Simon

Power is the ability to affect others to get the outcomes you want, and that can be done by coercion, payment or attraction.

At its heart, this book is about where this new left has come from, and where it might be going.

There was no silver bullet that could have prevented the 11 September attacks. There was nothing demonstrating or showing that something was coming in the United States. If there had been something, we would have acted on it.

Condoleezza Rice

The G-Zero isn't aspirational, it's analytic. Unfortunately, it's also where we are.

What is government? From the outside it looks like a security system based on the marriage of land and people, From the inside, it looks like and attempts to create a community. A government is like an oyster, hard on the outside and soft on the inside, and the outside and inside are utterly dependent on each other.

Elmer Eric Schattschneider

The passing of Marxism-Leninism first from China and then from the Soviet Union will mean its death as a living ideology.... For while there may be some isolated true believers left in places like Managua, Pyongyang, or Cambridge, MA...

Francis Fukuyama

Then what explains war among states? Rousseau's answer is really that war occurs because there is nothing to prevent it.

Procedure is not a unique feature of public administration. It is a concomitant of all organized activity, and many procedures are equally usable by private administration or public administration. Private as well as public "red tape" can be time-consuming and annoying to those affected, as anyone can testify who has tried to exchange a purchase without a sales slip or to cash a check without "proper identification.

Partial truths or half-truths are often more insidious than total falsehoods.

Samuel P. Huntington

In addition, a century or more of efforts to arrive at a feasible and politically acceptable mix of market and nonmarket elements has not produced a definitive, stable, or uniform solution.

Alexander Hamilton spoke the language of legitimacy when, as Publius, he noted in Federalist 27 the connection between sound Public Administration and widespread popular support

The chances for a problem to rise on the decision agenda are dramatically increased if a solution is attached.

John W. Kingdon

The most remarkable change in the moral history of mankind has been the rise - and occasionally the application - of the view that all people, and not just one's own kind, are entitled to fair treatment.

James Q. Wilson

In the 1930s, Adolf Hitler believed that his great-power rivals would be easy to exploit and isolate because each had little interest in fighting Germany and instead was determined to get someone else to assume the burden. He guessed right.

John Mearsheimer