Politics & Power Quote by Dean Inge

A good government is framed here as humanity's jackpot, then instantly yanked away as a prize no one has ever actually collected. That snap from blessing to impossibility is the engine of the line: Inge isn’t praising states so much as exposing our hunger to believe politics can be perfected. The sentence reads like a toast that turns into a diagnosis.

The intent is double-edged. On the surface, it’s a lament: if government is the greatest blessing, our collective failure to secure it is tragic. Underneath, it’s a jab at political self-congratulation. Nations love to treat their institutions as evidence of moral superiority or historical destiny; Inge punctures that with a universal negative that leaves no room for patriotic exceptions. If no nation has enjoyed good government, then every flag-waving narrative is, at best, premature.

The subtext is almost theological: “good government” functions like an ideal we can name but never incarnate. It’s a Platonic form hovering over the messy reality of compromise, corruption, bureaucracy, and human self-interest. Inge, as a philosopher working in the shadow of industrial modernity, two world wars, and the bureaucratic expansion of the state, had ample reason to doubt that governance scales cleanly with human virtue.

Context matters: writing from early 20th-century Britain, Inge watched liberal optimism collide with mass politics, propaganda, and administrative machinery. The line’s bleak wit doesn’t argue for cynicism as a lifestyle; it warns against political romanticism. Expecting “good government” as a stable possession invites disappointment. Treating it as a fragile, contested practice at least matches the evidence.