State Quotes

...the right to free expression is something one seizes, not something one is given.... if it does exist, it exists to be used against the established order.... There is absolute opposition between the artist and the state.

Taxes are the sinews of the state.

The State doesn't just want you to obey, it wants to make you WANT to obey.

For, in order to turn the individual into a function of the State, his dependence on anything beside the State must be taken from him.

A war is never undertaken by the ideal state, except in defense of its honor or its safety.

A constitution is the arrangement of magistracies in a state, especially of the highest of all. The government is everywhere sovereign in the state, and the constitution is in fact the government.

Musical innovation is full of danger to the State, for when modes of music change, the laws of the State always change with them.

Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state has become lawless or corrupt. And a citizen who barters with such a state shares in its corruption and lawlessness.

Shakespeare cared little for the State, the source of all our judgments, apart from its shows and splendours, its turmoils and battles, its flamings out of the uncivilized heart.

The State is to make what is useful. The individual is to make what is beautiful.

To the rulers of the state then, if to any, it belongs of right to use falsehood, to deceive either enemies or their own citizens, for the good of the state: and no one else may meddle with this privilege.

I am a strong individualist by personal habit, inheritance, and conviction; but it is a mere matter of common sense to recognize that the State, the community, the citizens acting together, can do a number of things better than if they were left to individual action.

States are as the men, they grow out of human characters.

What nobler employment, or more valuable to the state, than that of the man who instructs the rising generation?

Freedom in a democracy is the glory of the state, and, therefore, in a democracy only will the freeman of nature deign to dwell.

Let us never forget this fundamental truth: The State has no source of money other than the money people themselves earn.

The man of great wealth owes a peculiar obligation to the state because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government.

This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are.

The patronage state is an arrogant state. It assumes it can spend your money better than you do. Yet it expects you to work for it in the first place.

The education of all children, from the moment that they can get along without a mother's care, shall be in state institutions.

All forms of the state have democracy for their truth, and for that reason are false to the extent that they are not democracy

The state represents violence in a concentrated and organize form.

There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.

Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.

The chief foundations of all states, new as well as old or composite, are good laws and good arms.

Our children need strong families raising them with sturdy virtues, not to be smothered in the cold arms of the state.

Fear, Craft and Avarice Cannot rear a State.

The stability of the State depends upon the readiness of every citizen to subordinate his rights to those of the rest.

The bureaucracy takes itself to be the ultimate purpose of the state

There are 3 elements essential in the matters of the State, Food, Military equipment, and Confidence of the people in the ruler. Of these 3, Military Equipment is the least important, Food being the 2nd important, and Confidence of the people being the MOST important. All men rather die of starvation than in war, but nevertheless all men do die of old age. Lacking in Confidence from the people, a state cannot survive.

[What Hayek] does not see, or will not admit, [is] that a return to "free" competition means for the great mass of people a tyranny probably worse, because more irresponsible, than that of the State. The trouble with competitions is that somebody wins them. Professor Hayek denies that free capitalism necessarily leads to monopoly, but in practice that is where it has led, and since the vast majority of people would far rather have State regimentation than slumps and unemployment, the drift towards collectivism is bound to continue if popular opinion has any say in the matter.

The mass State has no intention of promoting mutual understanding and the relationship of man to man; it strives, rather, for atomization, for the psychic isolation of the individual. The more unrelated individuals are, the more consolidated the State becomes, and vice versa.

The state lies in all languages of good and evil; and whatever it says, it lies-and whatever it has, it has stolen.

Death is not natural for a state as it is for a human being, for whom death is not only necessary, but frequently even desirable.

I look upon an increase in the power of the State with the greatest fear because, although while apparently doing good by minimizing exploitation, it does the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality which lies at the heart of all progress.

The State is the coldest of all cold monsters.

Whereas the truth is that the State in which the rulers are most reluctant to govern is always the best and most quietly governed, and the State in which they are most eager, the worst.

A prince ought to have no other aim or thought, nor select anything else for his study, than war and its rules and discipline; for this is the sole art that belongs to him who rules, and it is of such force that it not only upholds those who are born princes, but it often enables men to rise from a private station to that rank. And, on the contrary, it is seen that when princes have thought more of ease than of arms they have lost their states. And the first cause of your losing it is to neglect this art; and what enables you to acquire a state is to be master of the art.

Is there anything worse for a state than to be split and disunited? or anything better than cohesion and unity?

We see many instances of cities going down like sinking ships to their destruction. There have been such wrecks in the past and there surely will be others in the future, caused by the wickedness of captains and crews alike. For these are guilty men, whose sin is supreme ignorance of what matters most.

Their military training will ensure success in war, but they must maintain unity by not allowing the state to grow to large, and by ensuring that the measures for promotion and demotion from one class to another are carried out. Above all they must maintain the educational system unchanged; for on education everything else depends, and it is an illusion to imagine that mere legislation without it can effect anything of consequence.

The State is a poor, good beast who means the best: it means friendly.

I take it that our state, having been founded and built up on the right lines, is good in the complete sense of the word.

Money does not arise by convention, any more than the state does. It arises out of exchange, and arises naturally out of exchange; it is a product of the same.

The patriot subordinates himself to his State in order to raise it above all other States and thus, as it were, to find his personal sacrifice repaid with ample interest through the might and greatness of his fatherland.

The existence of the state is inseparable from the existence of slavery.

The function of the true state is to impose the minimum restrictions and safeguard the maximum liberties of the people, and it never regards the person as a thing.

Man must never be treated as a means to the end of the state, but always as an end within himself.

Reasoned and willing obedience to the laws of the State is the first lesson in non-co-operation.

Some Socialists seem to believe that people should be numbers in a State computer. We believe they should be individuals. We are all unequal. No one, thank heavens, is like anyone else, however much the Socialists may pretend otherwise. We believe that everyone has the right to be unequal but to us every human being is equally important.

The state remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men.

The State is the sum total of the sacrifice, on its behalf, of its members.

There is nothing that gives a man consequence, and renders him fit for command, like a support that renders him independent of everybody but the State he serves.

The ideally non-violent state will be an ordered anarchy.

What is a throne? - a bit of wood gilded and covered in velvet. I am the state- I alone am here the representative of the people. Even if I had done wrong you should not have reproached me in public - people wash their dirty linen at home. France has more need of me than I of France.

In the bureaucracy, the identity of state interest and particular private aim is established in such a way that the state interest becomes a particular private aim over against other private aims.

So the state founded on natural principles is wise as a whole in virtue of the knowledge inherent in its smallest constituent class, which exercises authority over the rest. And the smallest class is the one which naturally possesses that form of knowledge which alone of all others deserves the title of wisdom.

Socialists cry “Power to the people”, and raise the clenched fist as they say it. We all know what they really mean - power over people, power to the State.

No man ought to own more property than needed for his livelihood; the rest, by right, belonged to the state.

If fifty thousand men were to die for the good of the State, I certainly would weep for them, but political necessity comes before everything else.