Amazing Quotes 24:Political Order in Changing Societies 2

Let's continue the collection of amazing quotes from "Political Order in Changing Societies." This time, let's cover chapter 4 -5.

Countries which have political armies also have political clergies, political universities, political bureaucracies, political labor unions, and political corporation.

-- Page 194

Corruption in a limited sense refers to the intervention of wealth in the political sphere. Praetorianism in a limited sense refers to the intervention of the military in politics, and clericalism to the participation of religious leaders.

-- Page 194 - 195

Independence frequently left a small, modernized, intellectual elite confronting a large, amorphous, unmobilized, still highly traditional society.

-- Page 200

... while other social forces can pressure the government, the military can replace the government. Monks and priests can demonstrate, students riot, and workers strike, but no one of these groups has, except in most unusual circumstances, demonstrated any capacity to govern.

-- Page 217

... their [the military] historical role is to open the dor to the middle class and to close it on the lower class.

-- Page 222

Even more so than other groups in society, military officers tend to see parties as the agents of disunity rather than as mechanisms for consensus-building. Their goal is community without politics, consensus by command. By criticizing and downgrading the role of politics the military prevent society from achieving the community which it needs and they value.

-- Page 244

The role of the city is constant: it is the permanent source of opposition. The role of the countryside is variable: it is either the source of stability or the source of revolution.

He who controls the countryside controls the country.

-- Page 292

Urban migration is, in some measure, a substitute for rural revolution. Hence, contrary to common belief, the susceptibility of a country to revolution may vary inversely with its rate of urbanization.

-- Page 299

Revolutions produce little liberty, but they are history's most expeditious means of producing fraternity, equality, and identity.

-- Page 311

Marxism is a theory of history. Leninism is a theory of political development.

-- Page 342