State Quotes

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

“The true wealth of a state consists in the number of its inhabitants, in their toil and industry.”

“...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.”

“A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in thegreat sense, and men, serve the state with their conscience also,and so necessarily resist it for the most part, and they arecommonly treated as enemies by it.”

“States that rise quickly, just as all the other things of nature that are born and grow rapidly, cannot have roots and ramifications; the first bad weather kills them”

“The state is not an organism capable of bringing either moral or material improvements to the populace...but merely a vehicle of power for the men and party in power.”

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

“Rome remained free for four hundred years and Sparta eight hundred, although their citizens were armed all that time; but many other states that have been disarmed have lost their liberties in less than forty years.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“What greater or better gift can we offer the republic than to teach and instruct our youth?[Lat., Quod enim munus reiplicae afferre majus, meliusve possumus, quam si docemus atque erudimus juventutem?]”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“The root of the kingdom is in the state. The root of the state is in the family. The root of the family is in the person of its head.”

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

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

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

“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.”

“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 represents violence in a concentrated and organize form.”

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

“Whatever the State saith is a lie; whatever it hath is a theft: all is counterfeit in it, the gnawing, sanguinary, insatiate monster.”