“Political scientists almost everywhere have promoted the expansion of government power. They have functioned as the clergy of oppression.”

— Rudolph Rummel

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Rudolph Rummel 57

American academic 1932–2014

Thomas Cahill book How the Irish Saved Civilization

Source: How the Irish Saved Civilization (1995), Ch. VI What Was Found

“If the power of government be very extensive, and the subjects of it have, consequently, little power over their own actions, that government is tyrannical, and oppressive; whether, with respect to its form, it be a monarchy, an aristocracy, or even a republic.”

Joseph Priestley book Essay on the First Principles of Government

Section III, "Of Civil Liberty"
Essay on the First Principles of Government, 2nd Edition (1771)

“I would therefore call upon Congress to take all the means within their constitutional powers to promote and encourage popular education throughout the country, and upon the people everywhere to see to it that all who possess and exercise political rights shall have the opportunity to acquire the knowledge which will make their share in the Government a blessing and not a danger. By such means only can the benefits contemplated by this amendment to the Constitution be secured.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

1870s, Message to the Senate and House of Representatives (1870)

“Does female orgasm have an evolutionary function? Ironically, scientists have yet to come to a satisfying conclusion about this matter.”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: The Ape That Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve (2018), p. 58

“Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Letter to Thomas Jefferson (17 October 1788) http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=1937&chapter=118854&layout=html&Itemid=27, as quoted in James Madison : The Writings, 1787-1790 http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=1937&Itemid=27 Vol. 5 (1904)]
1780s
Context: Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Governments, the real power lies in the majority of the Community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the constituents.

“The nature of women's oppression is unique: women are oppressed as women, regardless of class or race; some women have access to significant wealth, but that wealth does not signify power; women are to be found everywhere, but own or control no appreciable territory; women live with those who oppress them, sleep with them, have their children — we are tangled, hopelessly it seems, in the gut of the machinery and way of life which is ruinous to us.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

Woman Hating, ch. 9, p. 23, E.P. Dutton, New York (1974).

“Average Americans have little or no influence over the making of U. S. government policy. … Wealthy Americans wield a lot of influence. By investing money in politics, they can turn economic power into political power.”

Benjamin Page (1939) Professor of Decision Making

Benjamin I. Page and Martin Gilens, Democracy in America?: What Has Gone Wrong and What We Can Do About It (University of Chicago Press: 2017), p. 90

“Political scientists have long relied on organization theory as their foundation for understanding public bureaucracy. This approach makes good sense, but so far the payoffs have been rather limited. The surface problem is that organization theory, as the creature of sociologists, social psychologists, and, in more recent years, economists, has developed around explanatory concerns having little or nothing to do with government. The more fundamental problem is that political scientists have allowed this to happen by largely abandoning the field of organizations.”

Terry M. Moe (1949) American political scientist

Terry M. Moe, "Toward a Theory of Public Bureaucracy." Oliver E. Williamson ed. Organization theory: From Chester Barnard to the present and beyond (1995): 116.

“The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny; flattery to treachery; standing armies to arbitrary government; and the glory of God to the temporal interest of the clergy.”

David Hume book Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary

Part I, Essay 8: Of Public Credit (This appears as a footnote in editions H to P. Other editions include it in the body of the text, and some number it Essay 9.)
Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1741-2; 1748)

“In a political sense, there is one problem that currently underlies all of the others. That problem is making Government sufficiently responsive to the people. If we don't make government responsive to the people, we don't make it believable. And we must make government believable if we are to have a functioning democracy.”

Gerald Ford (1913–2006) American politician, 38th President of the United States (in office from 1974 to 1977)

Address at Jacksonville University, Jacksonville, Florida (16 December 1971); published in Gerald R. Ford, Selected Speeches (1973) edited by Michael V. Doyle
1970s

“Political scientists almost everywhere have promoted the expansion of government power. They have functioned as the clergy of oppression.”

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Rudolph Rummel 57

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