Bernard Crick > Quotes

“Boredom with established truths is a great enemy of free men.”
― Bernard Crick

“Democracy: stored up in heaven; but unhappily has not yet been communicated to us.”
― Bernard R. Crick

“We each have to choose something but it is another question how and why we presume to choose for others.”
― Bernard Crick, Democracy: A Very Short Introduction

“The populist mode of democracy is a politics of arousal more than of reason, but also a politics of diversion from serious concerns that need settling in either a liberal democratic or a civic republican manner.”
― Bernard Crick, Democracy: A Very Short Introduction

“Monarchy is like a splendid ship, with all sails set it moves majestically on, but then it hits a rock and sinks for ever. Democracy is like a raft. It never sinks but, damn it, your feet are always in the water. That is a good metaphor, for raft, he implies, is simply swept along by the tide or the current; one can with a paddle or a plank steer a little to stay afloat, trim forward direction slightly to left or right, perhaps even slow down or speed up a little, but there is no turning back against the current of democracy.”
― Bernard Crick, Democracy: A Very Short Introduction

“The praise of free men is worth having, for it is the only praise which is free from either servility or condescension.”
― Bernard Crick

“[Hitler] has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all “progressive” thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security and avoidance of pain. In such a view of life there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues. The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do. Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flag and loyalty-parades.”
― Bernard Crick, George Orwell: A Life

“my goals are extreme and therefore I moderate and measure my means.”
― Bernard Crick, In Defence of Politics

“Revolutions as often take place because the old regime simply collapse out of economic inefficiency and bureaucratic rigidity rather than for the reasons given out by their successors taking too much credit, however heroic their actions at the time of crisis (but so often in the past hopeless).”
― Bernard Crick, Democracy: A Very Short Introduction

“Man's inclination to justice makes democracy possible; but man's capacity for injustice makes it necessary.' The optimism we need to prevent ourselves from destroying our own democratic freedoms and, indeed, our own human habitat must be based on reasoned pessimism.”
― Bernard Crick, Democracy: A Very Short Introduction

“The attempt to politicize everything is the destruction of politics. When everything is seen as relevant to politics, than politics has in fact become totalitarian.”
― Bernard Crick, In Defence of Politics