Quotes About Realpolitik

We have not seen great things done in our time except by those who have been considered mean; the rest have failed.

How many schoolteachers were aware of what they actually were a part of? Surely a number close to zero. In schoolteaching, as in hamburger-flipping, the paycheck is the decisive ingredient. No insult is meant, at bottom this is what realpolitik means. We all have to eat.

Morgenthau quotes

Politics have no relation to morals.

I don't believe in ideology in international relations.

Most of Gingrich's moderate positions are rooted in a realpolitik that transcends ideology.

On Chiang Kai-Shek: "He's a son of a bitch but he's our son of a bitch."

We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.

There are "no permanent enemies, no permanent allies, only permanent interests,"23 Saul Alinsky often said, paraphrasing the British prime minister Lord Palmerston.

You know and we know, as practical men that the question of justice arises only between parties equal in strength and that the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.

Just as the first Ottoman warriors formed strategic alliances regardless of religious considerations, so the mature Ottoman Empire entered coalitions with one Christian state against another as realpolitik demanded. The pervasive notion of permanent and irreconcilable division between the Muslim and Christian worlds at this time is a fiction.

Afghans long ago resigned themselves to this sort of thing. Compromises must be made. Deals with the devil are better than ceaseless butchery. In the exigencies of post-conflict bygones, against the threat of collapse into more terrible bloodletting, the ugliness of realpolitik is the lesser evil.

You don't go to war with the President you want, you go to war with the President you have

The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood

(The great questions of the day) are not decided by speeches and majority votes but by blood and iron.

It is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to necessity.

We have not seen great things done in our time except by those who have been considered mean; the rest have failed.

Sono tanto semplici gli uomini, e tanto ubbidiscono alle necessità presenti, che colui che inganna, troverà sempre chi si lascerà ingannare.

It is necessary', he writes, for a prince to learn 'how not to be good' (Ch. XV). Machiavelli's wording on this matter is extremely precise: a man who wants 'to profess goodness at all times' will inevitably fail because he is surrounded by many unscrupulous men. Hence, 'it is necessary for a prince who wishes to maintain himself to learn how not to be good, and to use this knowledge or not to use it according to necessity' (Ch. XV).

comedic playwright.

Politics have no relation to morals.

Since any one who would act up to a perfect standard of goodness in everything, must be ruined among so many who are not good. It is essential, therefore, for a Prince who desires to maintain his position, to have learned how to be other than good, and to use or not to use his goodness as necessity requires.

With us there is great justice, because that war is just which is necessary, and arms are hallowed when there is no other hope but in them.

Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin by the great number who are not good.