“The ultimate aim of politics is not politics, but the activities which can be practised within the political framework of the State.”

—  Stephen Spender

Life and the Poet (1942)
Context: The ultimate aim of politics is not politics, but the activities which can be practised within the political framework of the State. Therefore an effective statement of these activities — e. g. science, art, religion — is in itself a declaration of ultimate aims around which the political means will crystallise … a society with no values outside of politics is a machine carrying its human cargo, with no purpose in its institutions reflecting their care, eternal aspirations, loneliness, need for love.

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Stephen Spender 76
English poet and man of letters 1909–1995

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