Alan Ryan Quotes & Sayings

The revolutionaries failed to institute the novel forms of social and political organization they hankered after; Workers would not accept a ten-day week, or state-appointed priests, or rectangular departements, or the cult of the Supreme Being. — Alan Ryan

This is a book about texts as well as their authors, it is not a textbook so much as a context book and a pretext book, concerned with settings and motives as well as the works themselves. Its success will be measured by the readers who pick up Plato's Republic, Hobbes's Leviathan, Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, and find themselves engrossed rather than baffled - and even when they are baffled, are happy to go on reading, interrogating, and arguing with their authors for themselves. — Alan Ryan

We do not go to work only to earn an income, but to find meaning in our lives. What we do is a large part of what we are — Alan Ryan

The revolt in Asia Minor was snugged out in 494, and the Athenians realized that they had acquired a dangerous enemy. Darius I's first attempt at invasion in 492 was abortive: a huge storm wrecked his fleet. In 491 the Persians demanded 'earth and water'
signs of submission
from the Aegean islands and mainland cities. Many submitted. Athens and Sparta not only stood firm but murdered the Persian ambassadors. The Athenians put them on trial and killed both the ambassadors and their translator for offenses against the Greek language; the Spartans simply thew them down a well. — Alan Ryan

Modern liberalism has many roots. One of the most important is the ideas of a man described by an American critic as 'his satanic free-trade majesty John Stuart Mill' and revered by others. — Alan Ryan

A colleague once described political theorists as people who were obsessed with two dozen books; after half a century of grappling with Mill's essay On Liberty, or Hobbes's Leviathan, I have sometimes thought two dozen might be a little on the high side. — Alan Ryan

Philosophy is the art of seeing through appearances to discern the hidden reality. — Alan Ryan

Richard A. Posner is an extraordinary person. If he did not exist, it would be hard to believe that he could. ( ... ) He writes with a flair that puts most journalists to shame and a depth of knowledge that puts most professors to shame. — Alan Ryan

Extreme poverty would be hard to bear, but a miserable person is miserable however rich. A good character is our most important possession, rich or poor. — Alan Ryan

America posed a deeply interesting question to any Frenchmen with a political curiosity to ask it. How had Americans launched a revolution that aimed at establishing a free, stable, and constitutional government and made a success of it, while the French had in forty-one years lurched from absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchy, to the declaration of the republic, to mob rule, the Terror, the mass murder, and thence to a conservative republic, Napoleonic autocracy, the Bourbon restoration, further revolution, and the installation of an Orleanist constitutional monarchy? — Alan Ryan

It is never right to injure anyone. It can never be right to make someone worse than he is. — Alan Ryan

Justice is the most "political" or institutional of the virtues. The legitimacy of a state rests upon its claim to do justice. — Alan Ryan

There were two views of how a polis was formed. The first was military: a scattered group of people came to live in one city behind a set of protective walls. The other was political: a group of people agreed to live under one authority, with or whithout the protection of a walled city. Synoikismos, or 'Living together', embraces both. Any political entity implies a population that recognizes a common authority, but the first 'city-states' were not always based on a city. Sparta makes the point. We think of Sparta as a city, but the Spartans were proud of the fact that they lived in villages without protective walls: their army was their wall and 'every man a brick. — Alan Ryan

In many cities, tyrants were able to seize power by offering to protect the poorer citizens against the rich or vice versa. "Tyrant" is a word with an unlovely ring to it, but did not inevitably imply that a ruler was brutal or self-seeking, only that he had acquired power unconstitutionally, and governed as a sole ruler. — Alan Ryan