Best Political Science Quotes

"We were never meant to be a simple majoritarian democracy. When people use 'democracy' instead of 'Republic,' they're making a categorical error."

"Democracy upholds the idea that every citizen has the right to participate in shaping the decisions that affect their lives."

"Each branch must stay in its lane and avoid overstepping the line and invading the space of the other branches."

"This great experiment of democracy is still that, an experiment."

"A nation state can either be a Republic or a Principality and either old or new."

"The essence of tyranny is the accumulation of too much power in one branch."

"I'm going to be studying history with the tools of political science and political theory on the one hand but also using history to keep political science and political theory honest."

"We have to rely on people in the end to maintain the balance between the states and the federal government."

"Power doesn't bend to reason; power only bends to power."

"The man was a proverbial chess master of international relations."

"The decline of private sector unionism provides a classic example of what political scientists call policy drift."

"The controversies that followed Professor Moynihan in and out of government did not diminish student interest in Professor Moynihan's courses..."

"The Constitution of the United States is the greatest practical achievement in political science."

"The Saints are now the team to beat in the NFC South."

"This effect occurs so frequently, economists have given it a name. It's called the median voter theorem."

"The civilizational state is when a civilization more or less coincides with the underlying nation state."

"Partisans prefer leaders closely representing their in-group stereotypes."

"We shall have World Government whether or not we like it; the only question is whether World Government will be achieved by conquest or consent."

"Populism is a reaction of a powerless majority against Elites."

"We need to stop the risk of civil war and deeply fragmented societies."

"The number one aim of the federal government is the comprehensive education of every single citizen in the science of government."

"Power intrinsically wants to be more; it is intrinsically expansive."

"Political power exists everywhere that we're being human it exists to at least some extent."

"We need to understand fascism and national socialism in order to defeat them."

"Democracy: the supreme power lodged in the hands of the people."

"Mutually assured destruction and a lot of very interesting concepts."

"You can talk about Citizens United and super PACs."

"Anocracy simply means partial democracy."

"I might have become a political theorist, political philosopher."

"It was like this is working this is great bad news is it didn't help my political science courses."

"Political philosophy is not just some kind of strange historical appendage attached to the trunk of political science; it is constitutive of its deepest problems."

"The development of the modern nation-state system in the last hundreds of years."

"The nation state is a post-Enlightenment phenomena. It's not an ancient phenomena."

"Archy can have one or several heads: monarchy, polyarchy, oligarchy, exarchy, heptarchy, etc."

"The first concept of a democracy was born in Athens, but its seeds were planted during the previous periods, which is what allowed them to sprout into one of the most important concepts in politics and social science."

"I'm not arguing that states are rational all the time our argument is that they're rational most of the time"

"She is distinguished professor and the Arthur F. Bentley professor of political science and co-director of the Workshop and Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University."

"The distinction which is made between the king and the statesman is as follows: when the government is personal, the ruler is a king; when, according to the rules of the political science, the citizens rule and are ruled in turn, then he is called a statesman."

"We were in a new age with new problems and in order to solve them we needed a new political science."

"That's the dynamism of democracy."

"Your government has a monopoly on violence."

"There's this story in political science and applied politics if the public isn't paying attention and it's going to be rent-seeking and well it will not be good for the public."

"Follow the money in political science language; we follow the incentives."

"Political science may owe more to America than to any country in the world."

"Tocqueville stands in the same tradition of political science as Aristotle and America's founders."

"They made political science into an active force that changed reality."

"Tocqueville offers a new political science for a new age."

"Power can check power and both powers that check each other can remain intact."

"The city-state was the highest and best community of all the communities."

"Populism... may well be a term that designates a kind of mobilization on the part of people who could turn right or could turn left."

"Responsiveness versus congruence: when opinion changes, does that affect what policymakers do?"

"The key to Effective Government, it was thought, was to take the direction of government agencies out of the hands of politicians and to place it within the control of men experienced within the various fields of government regulation."

"In the direct democracy of Athens, Assembly voters voted on each item debated, rather than platforms bundling several issues."

"There's a positive and significant relationship between democracy and human rights."

"In dictatorships institutions matter."

"Not all speech is the same; there's high speech and there's low speech. High speech is any kind of speech that promotes self-governance and engagement in democratic deliberations."

"The purpose of democracy is to manifest the sovereign role of the collective electorate."

"The only thing that breaks down a regime is internal contradiction."

"Deliberative polling... where the people's deliberations can actually be consequential."

"Political science is part of a vast cloud of sciences of the social world, studying social relations."

"Political equality matters because powerlessness kills people."

"Political science does not stand on its own; it is a cross-disciplinary course because it is all encompassing."

"At the end of this course, students are expected to have a broad overview of the meaning of political science."

"The controversy whether political science is a science or not is as old as the subject itself."

"A country is either democratic or they're not democratic when in actuality democracy is more of a spectrum."

"As a political science major, I am driven by the desire to make change in the world through representation and advocacy."

"...she studied political science. How the turntables."

"Nationality is not just a political fact; it is a consciousness that goes with it."

"The great conversation of political Theory... it's probably the most unique subfield within political science and it's also probably the oldest."

"This is why Thucydides is so superior to modern political scientists studying international relations. They don't understand these things and Thucydides did."

"Politics is a relationship between leaders and the electorate."

"Politics refers to the government of a country or to the government of a world."

"We are also two strong democracies."

"Retrospective voting is based on the track record of the politician."

"Prospective voting is based on the potential future that a candidate can bring."

"Several factors determine voter turnout in any given election."

"Demographics are a powerful tool in predicting how people are going to vote."

"The social contract is the idea that people give away a portion of their natural rights to elect the government."

"The very purpose of the First Amendment is to withhold certain basic rights such as religion, speech, freedom of association, freedom of conscience from the vagaries of the political process."

"A democratic deficit is a perceived deficiency in the way a particular democratic body works, especially in terms of accountability and control over policymaking."

"When we're merging data sets in political science, we normally have a cross-sectional component and a temporal component."

"We have no constitutionally guaranteed right to vote in this country."

"What's required to get democracy, what's required to keep it."

"Comparative politics can look at all political systems across the entire globe and across all time."

"Comparative politics is important because it is one of the main sub-disciplines of political science."

"It's both a field of inquiry and the method of inquiry."

"We can codify concepts, categories, and classifications."

"Political polling is a science from design to implementation."

"The branches of government were set up specifically so that all the different branches could keep each other in check."

"...the larger the Republic the less likely it was to be hijacked by narrow interest groups."

"Comparative politics can inform but it also can possibly challenge or even change our ideals down the road."

"I'm Anna, I'm a poli-sci major, and I'm happy to be here."

"Every country should have their sovereignty."