#pol

I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale. ↗

— Thomas Jefferson

#debt #deficit-spending #government #loans #political-science

You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch. ↗

— Edgar D. Mitchell

#moon #politics #science #space #science

The anthropologists got it wrong when they named our species Homo sapiens ('wise man'). In any case it's an arrogant and bigheaded thing to say, wisdom being one of our least evident features. In reality, we are Pan narrans, the storytelling chimpanzee. ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#chimpanzees #humanity #stories #science

It is essential that anyone reading this book know at the outset that the author is apolitical. I was convinced in 1927 that humanity's most fundamental survival problems could never be solved by politics. ↗

— Richard Buckminster Fuller

#science

["The Devil in the Dark"] impressed me because it presented the idea, unusual in science fiction then and now, that something weird, and even dangerous, need not be malevolent. That is a lesson that many of today's politicians have yet to learn. ↗

— Arthur C. Clarke

#fear #politicians #politics #science-fiction #star-trek

Justice is what is good for the stronger. ↗

— Thrasymachus

#political-science #realism #science

[M]onarchy was, or ought to be, not so much absolute as mitigated by the principle of ius politicum, supporting a mixed polity partaking of elements both royal and political, which is to say, popular and representative. ↗

— Patrick Collinson

#monarchy-of-the-uk #political-science #politics #royalty #science

The political reputation of Servius rests upon his organization of society according to a fixed scale of rank and fortune. He originated the census, a measure of the highest utility to a state destined, as Rome was, to future preeminence; for by means of its public service, in peace as well as in war, could thence forward be regularly organized on the basis of property; every man's contribution could be in proportion to his means. ↗

— Livy

#history #law #policy #political-science #science

When Numa died, Rome by the twin disciplines of peace and war was as eminent for self-mastery as for military power. ↗

— Livy

#political-science #religion #religion

Believing, as they now did, that the heavenly powers took part in human affairs, they became so much absorbed in the cultivation of religion and so deeply imbued with the sense of their religious duties, that the sanctity of an oath had more power to control their lives than the fear of punishment for lawbreaking. ↗

— Livy

#law #policy #political-philosophy #political-science #religion