STATE

Related Subjects: Constitution, Government, Nation

1. States as great engines move slowly.—BACON, Advancement of Learning
   

2. I believe that those who profess horror at the intervention of the state for the protection of the weak lay themselves open to the suspicion that they wish to use their strength for the benefit of a portion for the oppression of the rest.—BISMARCK
   

3. Always without exception, the most civilized State is the most aggressive.—J. G. FICHTE
   

4. The state is at the bottom a product of the class struggle, serving to keep one particular class on top. This explains why the British Empire will commit suicide, as it is now doing, rather than risk a change in its class structure.—J. B. S. HALDANE, I Believe
   

5. [The' State] is the divine idea as it exists on earth . . . It is the absolute power on earth: it is its own end and object. It is the ultimate end which has the highest right against the individual.—HEGEL
   

6. I believe that the State exists for the development of individual lives, not individuals for the development of the State.—JULIAN HUXLEY, I Believe
   

7. The chief foundations of all states, new as well as old or composite, are good laws and good arms; and as there cannot be good laws where the state is not well armed, it follows that where they are well armed they have good laws.—MACHIAVELLI, The Prince
   

8. As soon as any man says of the affairs of the State, "What does it matter to me?" the State may be given up for lost.—ROUSSEAU, The Social Contract
   

9. As soon as public service ceases to be the chief business of the citizens, and they would rather serve with their money than with their persons, the State is not far from its fall.—ROUSSEAU, The Social Contract
   

10. The State is Power. Of so unusual a type is its power, that it has no power to limit its power. Hence no treaty, when it becomes inconvenient, can be binding; hence the very notion of general arbitration is absurd; hence war is part of the Divine order. Small states must be contemptible, because they must be weak; success is the test of merit, power is its reward; and all nations get what they deserve.—TREITSCHKE
    

11. For the race to get to this Modern State as a whole it had to get there as so many hundreds of millions of human beings, all individually aware of that as the general objective at which their lives aimed. The Modern State could not arrive as an empty form with all humanity left behind it. Every teacher, every writer, every talker, every two friends who talked together constituted a potential primary nucleus in a renascent social system. These nuclei had to be organized. Their existence had to be realized, and they had to be brought into effective cooperation.—H. G. WELLS, The Shape of Things to Come