“Politics is the art of stopping people from minding their own business.”
Tel Quel (1943)
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Paul Valéry 89
French poet, essayist, and philosopher 1871–1945Related quotes

Pericles commenting the participation of Athenian citizens in politics, as quoted in Models of Democracy (2006) by David Held, Stanford University Press, p. 14. Book II, chapter 40.

“We mean by "politics" the people's business — the most important business there is.”
Speech in Chicago, Illinois (19 November 1955)

Review of Arthur Koestler’s The Act of Creation, in the New Statesman, 19 June 1964
1960s

“Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.”
Tel Quel (1943)

“An Anarchist is one who minds his own business.”
The Better Part (1901)
Context: I AM an Anarchist.
All good men are Anarchists.
All cultured, kindly men; all gentlemen; all just men are Anarchists.
Jesus was an Anarchist.
A Monarchist is one who believes a monarch should govern. A Plutocrat believes in the rule of the rich. A Democrat holds that the majority should dictate. An Aristocrat thinks only the wise should decide; while an Anarchist does not believe in government at all. Richard Croker is a Monarchist; Mark Hanna a Plutocrat; Cleveland a Democrat; Cabot Lodge an Aristocrat; William Penn, Henry D. Thoreau, Bronson Alcott and Walt Whitman were Anarchists. An Anarchist is one who minds his own business. An Anarchist does not believe in sending warships across wide oceans to kill brown men, and lay waste rice fields, and burn the homes of people who are fighting for liberty. An Anarchist does not drive women with babes at their breasts and other women with babes unborn, children and old men into the jungle to be devoured by beasts or fever or fear, or die of hunger, homeless, unhouseled and undone.
Destruction, violence, ravages, murder, are perpetrated by statute law..

“Let every man mind his own business.”
Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part I, Book III, Ch. 8.