Fascism aestheticizes politics and communism answers with the politicization of art.

—Walter Benjamin, quoted in Claire Dederer, Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma

It is impossible to deny the inconceivable influence that military glory exercises upon the spirit of a nation. General Jackson, whom the Americans have twice elected to be the head of their government, is a man of violent temper and very moderate talents; nothing in his whole career ever proved him qualified to govern a free people; and, indeed, the majority of the enlightened classes of the Union has always opposed him. But he was raised to the Presidency, and has been maintained there, solely by the recollection of a victory which he gained, twenty years ago, under the walls of New Orleans; a victory which was, however, a very ordinary achievement and which could only be remembered in a country where battles are rare.

—Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

In 1859 the State Superintendent of Public Instruction declared that "our present school system has furnished instruction to only 11,183 children out of 40,530; and to them for only five and a half months out of the twelve. If we do not take instant and effective means to remedy it these 29,347 neglected children will grow up into 29.347 benighted men and women—a number nearly sufficient at ordinary times to control the vote of the state, and in consequence to shape its legislation and its destiny." The legislature did not take "instant" measures of relief, and the 29,347 unfortunate ignoramuses were well along the road to maturity before the state's conscience troubled it.

—Louis B. Wright, Culture on the Moving Frontier

Because of the impending war with England in 1811, patriotism in Kentucky reached such a pitch that the legislature passed a law forbidding attorneys to cite precedents from English courts since July 4, 1776.

—Louis B. Wright, Culture on the Moving Frontier

A sick society must think much about politics, as a sick man must think much about his digestion; to ignore the subject may be fatal cowardice for the one as for the other. But if either comes to regard it as the natural food of the mind—if either forgets that we think of such things only in order to be able to think of something else—then what was undertaken for the sake of health has become itself a new and deadly disease.

—C. S. Lewis, Membership

When the state is established, consent lies in residence; to dwell in the territory is to submit to the sovereignty.

—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract

The second relation is that of the members with one another, or with the body as a whole, and this relation should, in respect to the first, be as small, and, in respect to the second, as great as possible; so that every citizen may be perfectly independent of all the rest, and in absolute dependence on the state.

—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract

In order to discover the rules of association that are most suitable to nations, a superior intelligence would be necessary who could see all the passions of men without experiencing any one of them; who would have no affinity with our nature and yet know it thoroughly; whose happiness would not depend on us, and who would nevertheless be quite willing to interest himself in ours; and, lastly, one who, storing up for himself with  the progress of time a far-off glory in the future, could labor in one age and enjoy in another. Gods would be necessary to give laws to men.

—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract

When factions, partial associations, are formed to the detriment of the whole society, the will of each of these associations becomes general with reference to its members, and particular with reference to the state; it may then be said that there are no longer as many voters as there are men, but only as many voters as there are associations.

—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract

[ . . . ] calling themselves only kings of the Persians or Scythians or Macedonians, they seem to have regarded themselves as chiefs of men rather than as owners of countries. Monarchs of today call themselves more cleverly kings of France, Spain, England, etc.; in thus holding the land they are quite sure of holding its inhabitants.

—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract

The greatest of evils is civil war. It is bound to come if people want to reward merit, because everyone will claim to be meritorious. The evil to be feared if the succession falls by right of birth to a fool is neither so great nor so certain.

—Blaise Pascal, Thoughts

Also in the eleventh century, according to the testimony of Thietmar of Merseberg, "The Polish princes punished those who violated the ecclesiastical laws on meat abstention by using persuasive methods like pulling out of teeth"; a lesser penalty, however, than that called for by Charlemagne in the capitulary De Partibus Saxoniae, which was no less than death.

—Massimo Montanari, The Culture of Food

"Divine right" requires a human army to make it manifest to the incredulous.

—Germaine de Staël, Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution

Such defiance of royal authority could not be allowed to stand, and Charles sent orders to the General Assembly to disband or be charged with treason. It remained in session as though he did not exist.

—Otto Scott, The Great Christian Revolution

King James I insisted that he held his authority directly from God, that he himself was the supreme, indeed the sole, lawgiver, that parliament was merely an advisory board summoned by him when he felt inclined and then only because it was the custom of the land.

—Maurice Ashley, The Greatness of Oliver Cromwell

That Liberalism may be a tendency towards something very different in itself, is a possibility in its nature. For it is something that tends to release energy rather than accumulate it, to relax, rather than to fortify. It is a movement not so much defined by its end, as by its starting point; away from, rather than towards, something definite. Our point of departure is more real to us than our destination; and the destination is likely to present a very different picture when arrived at, from the vaguer image formed in the imagination. By destroying traditional social habits of the people, by dissolving their natural collective consciousness into individual constituents, by licensing the opinions of the most foolish, by substituting instruction for education, by encouraging cleverness rather than wisdom, the upstart rather than the qualified, by fostering a notion of getting on to which the alternative is a hopeless apathy, Liberalism can prepare the way for that which is its own negation: the artificial, mechanised or brutalized control which is a desperate remedy for its chaos.

—T. S. Eliot, The Idea of a Christian Society

Organized human societies have existed for 8,000 years, and democracy has been a form of government, in some places and there only fitfully, for a mere two centuries; it is early days to judge.

—Paul Johnson, The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830

Bolívar would enter each capital as a conqueror, on horseback, and would be greeted by “nymphs” (as they were always called) dressed in white, who would present him with garlands. The nymphs were usually recruited from a local brothel. Bolívar’s next step would be to go to whatever congress or legislature was gathered and (as he put it in Lima in 1823) “prostrate myself at the foot of the civil power, to recognize the sovereignty of the nation and manifest my submission to it.” He would hand over his sword, the deputies would hand it back to him, and he would carry on as before. Other generals also went through these pantomimes. At the old university town of Chuquisaca, Bolivia, Antonio José de Sucre was obliged to climb into a red-and-white Roman chariot drawn by 12 young men, then to be taken through the streets hidden behind immense pyramids and obelisks made of cardboard to an “Ionic Temple,” where six nymphs in white recited poetry.

                                                                                                

—Paul Johnson, The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830

All Frenchmen have the right to publish and have printed their opinions, provided they comply with the laws intended to prohibit the abuses of that liberty.

—Article Eight of the French constitutional Charter of 1814, quoted in Paul Johnson, The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830

The acquisition of knowledge by their subjects may have lost the French Haiti and the Spaniards South America, but it preserved half the world to the Romans, gave them a hold on the manners and opinions of their subjects and left them a kind of moral empire long after their physical power was destroyed.

—Mountstuart Elphinstone, quoted in Paul Johnson, The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830