#State Quotes

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

“In dealing with the State, we ought to remember that its institutions are not aboriginal, though they existed before we were born; that they are not superior to the citizen; that every one of them was once the act of a single man; every law and usage was a man's expedient to meet a particular case; that they all are imitable, all alterable; we may make as good; we may make better.”

“This little world, this little state, this little commonwealth of our own.”

“Put yourself in a state of mind where you say to yourself”

“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 difference between acting badly or brilliantly is not based on your ability, but on the state of your mind and/or body in any given moment.”

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

“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.”

“Fear, Craft and Avarice Cannot rear a State.”

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

“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.”

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

“Democracy does not contain any force which will check the constant tendency to put more and more on the public payroll. The state is like a hive of bees in which the drones display, multiply and starve the workers so the idlers will consume the food and the workers will perish.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Rights of true citizenship accrue only to those who serve the State to which they belong.”

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

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”