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We should never doubt that nationalizing the moral life is the first step toward totalitarianism.

— Kenneth Minogue

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More quotes by Kenneth Minogue

Life is a better teacher of virtue than politicians.

Dynasties rise and fall according to what the Chinese used to call 'the mandate of heaven', but life for the peasant changes little. Everything depends on the wisdom of the ruler.

However ignorant a person may be, he or she can always moralize. And it is the propensity to moralize that takes up most of the space for public discussion in contemporary society.

Politics is the activity by which the framework of human life is sustained; it is not life itself.

Europeans have sometimes been beguiled by a despotism that comes concealed in the seductive form of an ideal – as it did in the cases of Hitler and Stalin. This fact may remind us that the possibility of despotism is remote neither in space nor in time.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Kenneth Minogue (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.