Source: The Subversion of Christianity (1984), p. 116
Context: I believe that the biblical teaching is clear. It always contests political power. It incites to "counterpower," to "positive" criticism, to an irreducible dialogue (like that between king and prophet in Israel), to antistatism, to a decentralizing of the relation, to an extreme relativizing of everything political, to an anti-ideology, to a questioning of all that claims either power or dominion (in other words, of all things political), and finally, if we may use a modern term, to a kind of "anarchism" (so long as we do not relate the term to the anarchist teaching of the nineteenth century).
Source: The Subversion of Christianity (1984), p. 113
Speech before the Federal Club http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/images/research/txtspeeches/581.pdf, New York City, (6 March 1891), as published in New York Daily Tribune (7 March 1891)
1890s
Context: Of recent years... representative government all over the world has been threatened with a growing paralysis. Legislative bodies have tended more and more to become wholly inefficient for the purposes of legislation. The prime feature in causing this unhealthy growth has been the discovery by minorities that under the old rules of parliamentary procedure they could put a complete stop to all legislative action... If the minority is as powerful as the majority there is no use of having political contests at all, for there is no use in having a majority.
1930s, On Protracted Warfare (1938)
“I think politics in general are just like a popularity contest but McCain is just… old.”
Commenting on Republican presidential candidate John McCain, aged 71.
Appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (January 17, 2008)
Source: Politics Among Nations (1948), p. 29 (1978 edition)
“Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.”
The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Context: Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
From the essay "After Neoconservatism" http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/19/magazine/neo.html in the New York Times Magazine, February 19, 2006.
2000s
Je crois que le pouvoir politique s’exerce encore, s’exerce en outre, de plus, par l’intermédiaire d’un certain nombre d’institutions qui ont l’air comme ça de n’avoir rien de commun avec le pouvoir politique, qui ont l’air d’en être indépendantes et qui ne le sont pas.
Debate with Noam Chomsky, École Supérieure de Technologie à Eindhoven, November 1971
