Political Order Quotes

“Durable political systems ultimately rely on institutions, not individuals.”
― Gideon Rachman, The Age of the Strongman: How the Cult of the Leader Threatens Democracy around the World

“What makes a political order legitimate, in the conservative view, is not the free choices that create it, but the free choices that it creates.”
― Roger Scruton, Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition

“This is a book about a god that succeeded, though a rather neurotic god that frets about why it has succeeded, whether it really has succeeded, and, if it has, how long success can last. It asks itself who it is and which its idols are. It worries whether it deserves its success or whether it is simply a successor, the next god in line. For one so widely worshipped, the self-doubt is startling. But this is an ungodly god that got its start by challenging other authorities, if not the notion of authority itself. It is the kind of god that tells people to obey its commands so long as they agree to. Though it is hard to picture the world without it, nobody is quite sure what it is or why it feels indispensable. The god’s name is liberalism.”
― Edmund Fawcett, Liberalism: The Life of an Idea

“Controlling time — whether via the clocks for churches, trains or data centers — has always been a function of controlling the political order.”
― Kate Crawford, Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence

“When society is organised from above, either by the top-down government of a revolutionary dictatorship, or by the impersonal edicts of an inscrutable bureaucracy, then accountability rapidly disappears from the political order, and from society, too.
Top-down government breeds irresponsible individuals, and the confiscation of civil society by the state leads to a widespread refusal among the citizens to act for themselves.”
― Roger Scruton, Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition