State Power Quotes

#1. Social power is the power over nature, the living standards achieved by men in mutual exchange. State power, as we have seen, is the coercive and parasitic seizure of this production - a draining of the fruits of society for the benefit of nonproductive (actually antiproductive) rulers.

Murray N. Rothbard

#2. I think our concept of revolution, in terms of getting the power to do things, is too focused on the state. We have a scenario of revolution that first, you know, comes from 1917, that first you take the state power, and then you change things. And we don't realize it's collapsed.

Grace Lee Boggs

#3. All the power [the State] has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn. Therefore every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power.

Albert Jay Nock

#4. Within the realm of fiction, it is always tempting to set one's stories in a dystopian future, where all our misgivings about state power can be shown in full force.

Anne Fortier

#5. The true enemy of this bunch was not State Power but Lack of Imagination.

Haruki Murakami

#6. Smaller government, more individual responsibility, more individual control creates more Republicans. More state power and ownership and control and top-down decision-making creates more Democrats.

Grover Norquist

#7. We find two great gangs of political speculators, who alternately take possession of the state power and exploit it by the most corrupt ends
the nation is powerless against these two great cartels of politicians who are ostensibly its servants, but in reality dominate and plunder it.

Friedrich Engels

#8. In war, State power is pushed to its ultimate, and, under the slogans of "defense" and "emergency," it can impose a tyranny upon the public such as might be openly resisted in time of peace.

Murray N. Rothbard

#9. Wartime always brings expansions of state power, together with erosions of moral and constitutional standards.

Joseph Sobran

#10. For ardent believers in Chinese exceptionalism, the Confucian tradition of political stability and centralized state power is the critical factor in the realization of a 'harmonious society.

Patrick Mendis

#11. That Amendment requires the state to be a neutral in its relations with groups of religious believers and nonbelievers; it does not require the state to be their adversary. State power is no more to be used so as to handicap religions than it is to favor them.

Hugo Black

#12. anarchism is to Marxism-Leninism what Anabaptism was to the magisterial Reformation: a revolutionary movement predicated upon negating, rather than seizing control of, state power.

Mark Van Steenwyk

#13. Those of us who are condemned as radicals, idealists, and dreamers call for basic reforms that, if enacted, would make peaceful reform possible. But corporate capitalists, now unchecked by state power and dismissive of the popular will, do not see the fires they are igniting.

Chris Hedges

#14. If human beings are in general too irrational and selfish to work out the challenges of social organization in a productive and positive manner, then they are far too irrational and selfish to be given the monopolistic violence of state power, or vote for their leaders.

Stefan Molyneux

#15. The shift from government (state power on its own) to governance (a broader configuration of state and key elements in civil society) has therefore been marked under neoliberalism.11 In this respect the practices of the neoliberal and developmental state broadly converge.

David Harvey

#16. I'm of that generation of Jews still deeply influenced by the Holocaust. Certainly the notion that the state power to kill can be subject to such extraordinary abuse is always lurking beneath the surface for me. Certainly my experience and identity as a Jew is there.

Scott Turow

#17. The history of the twentieth century was dominated by the struggle against totalitarian systems of state power. The twenty-first will no doubt be marked by a struggle to curtail excessive corporate power.

Eric Schlosser

#18. Today the discredit of words is very great. Most of the time the media transmit lies. In the face of an intolerable world, words appear to change very little. State power has become congenitally deaf, which is why /but the editorialists forget it /terrorists are reduced to bombs and hijacking.

John Berger

#19. There is, in fact, a strong case to be made that a prime concern of government is the security of state power from the population. As

Noam Chomsky

#20. Russia needs a strong state power and must have it. But I am not calling for totalitarianism.

Vladimir Putin

#21. The implication strongly is that Osama bin Laden is a Hitler, even though he has no state power at all. It's just grotesque if you seriously think about it.

Tariq Ali

#22. Ultimately, each transnational firm strives for its own advantage, and is supported in that effort by the state power wherein it resides, or at least where its main shareholders are domiciled.

Herbert Schiller

#23. When social cooperation is disrupted, state power is always strengthened.

Wilhelm Reich

#24. The competition of social power with State power is always disadvantaged, since the State can arrange the terms of competition to suit itself, even to the point of outlawing any exercise of social power whatever in the premises; in other words, giving itself a monopoly.

Albert Jay Nock

#25. A religion that needs state power to enforce obedience to its beliefs is a religion that has lost confidence in the power of its Deity.

Russell D. Moore

#26. Even under Stalin, Soviet state power, acting through law and the courts, confronted serious limits in its efforts to govern, much less transform, its colonial Central Asian periphery.

Douglas Northrop

#27. A dramatic, evocative, thoughtful and very accessible account of one of the most important stories of the century - and one of the most ominous, unless citizens are aroused to action to rein in abusive state power.

Noam Chomsky

#28. In proportion as you give the state power to do things for you, you give it power to do things to you.

Albert Jay Nock

#29. After seizing state power, the victors have a powerful interest in moving the revolution out of the streets and into the museums and schoolbooks as quick as possible, lest the people decide to repeat the experience.

James C. Scott

#30. So long as we only believe in the justice of the state, of the law-made by those in power, to serve those in power-so long will we continue to be exploited by those in power.

Derrick Jensen

#31. In this distribution of powers the wisdom of our constitution is manifested. It is the province and duty of the Executive to preserve to the Nation the blessings of peace. The Legislature alone can interrupt those blessings, by placing the Nation in a state of War.

Alexander Hamilton

#32. I have introduced a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and make it clear that the Congress and state legislatures do have the ability and the power to regulate and get corporate funding out of political campaigns.

Bernie Sanders

#33. Happiness is a 'state of mind' which we ourselves have the power to control - and that control lies in our thinking.

Claude M. Bristol

#34. Society already possesses the psychological techniques needed to obtain universal observance of a code
a code which would guarantee the success of a community or state. The difficulty is that these techniques are in the hands of the wrong people
or, rather, there aren't any right people.

B.F. Skinner

#35. American policy seems to be wed to a perpetual state of war. Why? History shows that the world will always be in flux or turmoil, with different peoples competing for visibility and power. The U.S. cannot fix the fate of every nation.

Camille Paglia

#36. Nothing really succeeds which is not based on reality; sham, in a large sense, is never successful. In the life of the individual, as in the more comprehensive life of the State, pretension is nothing and power is everything.

Edwin Percy Whipple

#37. The central feature of pride is enmity - enmity toward God and enmity toward our fellowmen. Enmity means "hatred toward, hostility to, or a state of opposition." It is the power by which Satan wishes to reign over us.

Ezra Taft Benson

#38. If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Tsar himself.

Mikhail Bakunin

#39. We do not want an official state church. If ninety-nine percent of the population were Catholics, I would still be opposed to it. I do not want civil power combined with religious power. I want to make it clear that I am committed as a matter of deep personal conviction to separation.

John F. Kennedy

#40. Enlightenment is the ability to comprehend ourselves, it is the power to peer into our hearts and minds and reach that state of spiritual bliss, which may or may not lead us to salvation.

Balroop Singh

#41. Not in the state of unconsciousness, but in full awareness when the higher Power will descend into and direct us, then only the yogic life will begin.

Sri Aurobindo

#42. 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.

Niccolo Machiavelli

#43. War has all the characteristics of socialism most conservatives hate: Centralized power, state planning, false rationalism, restricted liberties, foolish optimism about intended results, and blindness to unintended secondary results.

Joseph Sobran

#44. If the average person realized the power he wields over his life and destiny, he would live in a perpetual state of wonder and thanksgiving.

Earl Nightingale

#45. Whenever legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience.

John Locke

#46. Hence [through No Child Left Behind] the state has been given power...to fire all teachers and principles. So here we have an unusual case in which the students are engaged in the performances, but the high stakes have been displaced onto the teachers who are preparing their charges for the exams.

James M. Lang

#47. Every hour of your life that ticks by, there are numerous points and moments when you can choose to pause - and be aware of your mental and physical state. At any given point, you can freeze the flow that is your life, and be fully conscious for a moment.

Kevin Michel

#48. The more developed sexual passion, in both sexes, is very largely an emotion of power, domination, or appropriation. There is no state of feeling that says mine, mine, more fiercely.

Charles Horton Cooley

#49. All branches of our government today are controlled by individuals who use their power to undermine liberty and enhance the welfare/warfare state-and frequently their own wealth and power,

Ron Paul

#50. When state and religion are one, religion becomes a means for the powerful to remain in power.

Walter Jon Williams

#51. Thought control is the ability to direct mind and attention anywhere. Your ability to win is dependent upon the power of your concentration. Winning is a state of mind.

Frederick Lenz

#52. The pursuit of wealth generally diverts men of great talents and of great passions from the pursuit of power, and it very frequently happens that a man does not undertake to direct the fortune of the State until he has discovered his incompetence to conduct his own affairs.

Alexis De Tocqueville

#53. Racists are everywhere, but historically speaking the real danger came from Progressives that desired the power of the state to engineer society upon a racial lines.

A.E. Samaan

#54. If U.S. national sovereignty continues, it is only as a state that Puerto Rico will have permanent 10th Amendment powers over its non-federal affairs, as well as voting power in Congress.

Dick Thornburgh

#55. Each state enjoys sovereign power.

Gouverneur Morris

#56. In truth, a State whose society is not sovereign is no sovereign State at all. Such is the case when a society has no chance to decide the common good, and when it has been denied the basic right to share in power and responsibility

Pope John Paul II

#57. Government has no right to control individual liberty beyond what is necessary to the safety and well-being of society. Such is the boundary which separates the power of the government and the liberty of the citizen or subject in the political state.

John C. Calhoun

#58. I understand the importance of political power, so I will use my strength and influence to convince as many people as I can within the party and outside the party that a Palestinian state is bad news for Israel.

Danny Danon

#59. Playing (Serena) it always felt like playing a steamroller. No subtlety, no finesse, just raw, loud power. To respect this style of play was always a bit tough for me, but of course I had to, because the rules of tennis dont state that having a beautiful game is required to become No. 1.

Martina Hingis

#60. The ongoing changes in the distribution of global power and mounting global strife make it all the more imperative that America not retreat into an ignorant garrison-state mentality or wallow in self-righteous cultural hedonism

Zbigniew Brzezinski

#61. Neither a state nor a bank ever have had unrestricted power of issuing paper money without abusing that power.

David Ricardo

#62. A state's potential power is based on the size of its population and the level of its wealth.

John Mearsheimer

#63. The State acquires power ... and because of its insatiable lust for power it is incapable of giving up any of it. The State never abdicates.

Frank Chodorov

#64. The media serve the interests of state and corporate power, which are closely interlinked, framing their reporting and analysis in a manner supportive of established privilege and limiting debate and discussion accordingly.

Noam Chomsky

#65. She resented the fact that her veil, which to her was a symbol of her sacred relationship to God, had now become an instrument of power, turning the women who wore them into political signs and symbols. Where do your loyalties lie, Mr. Bahri, with Islam or the state?

Azar Nafisi

#66. The democratic state can sometimes abuse its power as much as those who seek to destroy it abuse fundamental rights and democratic practices.

David Blunkett

#67. There is but one power which heals - that is God. The state or condition through which the healing takes place is the confidence of the heart. By some this state is reached through pills, powders, and physicians. By others through hygiene, fasting, and prayer. By others through direct perception.

Abdu'l- Baha

#68. Your faith begins to move, to act, when the power of God supernaturally empties you of doubt and fills you with a knowing. You come into a state of knowing that you know that you know. In that instant you cannot doubt.

Oral Roberts

#69. If you look at history you'll find that no state has been so plagued by its rulers as when power has fallen into the hands of some dabbler in philosophy or literary addict.

Desiderius Erasmus

#70. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.

Henry A. Wallace

#71. If a state should pass laws forbidding its citizens to become wise and holy, it would be made a byword for all time. But this, in effect, is what our commercial, social, and political systems do. They compel the sacrifice of mental and moral power to money and dissipation.

John Lancaster Spalding

#72. The whole of mankind's progress has had to be achieved against the resistance and opposition of the state and its power of coercion.

Ludwig Von Mises

#73. Religion in the form of polytheism entered the world as the vindication of power. Not only was there no separation of church and state; religion was the transcendental justification of the state.

Jonathan Sacks

#74. Increasing the power of the state in response to the Soviet menace would not defeat socialism in Russia but bring it to the United States.

Frank Chodorov

#75. The natural condition of the modern conservative movement is to always be in a state of revolution. Conservatives are, by definition, uncomfortable with power.

Craig Shirley

#76. Any computer-electronics technician knows otherwise. Try to find a voltage representing one or zero when the power is off! The circuits are in a mu state.

Robert M. Pirsig

#77. The greater speed and success that distinguish the planting of the human race in this country, over all other plantations in history, owe themselves mainly to the new subdivisions of the State into small corporations of land and power.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#78. Anybody who has stood on the prairie in North Dakota has felt the force of the wind and knows that our state has an inexhaustible supply of wind power. The potential here to create jobs and draw millions of dollars in new investment to North Dakota is enormous.

Kent Conrad

#79. The United States was a great power less because of its ideas than because, with direct access to the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, it was "the most favored state in the world from the point of view of location.

Robert D. Kaplan

#80. With the conception that the Revolution was only a means of securing political power, it was inevitable that all revolutionary values should be subordinated to the needs of the Socialist State; indeed, exploited to further the security of the newly acquired governmental power.

Emma Goldman

#81. The most immediate task is to make certain that no state or combination of states gains the capacity to expel the United States from Eurasia or even to diminish significantly its decisive arbitration role.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

#82. The types of thoughts that you think create a state of mind. The reason you think the thoughts you do results from your level of power.

Frederick Lenz

#83. Christmas has become a public affirmation of the power and benignity of the state, to which we all make obeisance in the sybolism of the breath test ceremony.

Auberon Waugh

#84. The individual cannot bargain with the State. The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself.

Ursula K. Le Guin

#85. If we add state capitalism to the Bush administration's success in eroding both the US Constitution and the power of Congress, we may be witnessing the final death of accountable constitutional government.

Paul Craig Roberts

#86. Power relations between men and women must change profoundly, men must be partners in the pursuit of gender equality, in their decision-making roles, as heads of state, CEOs, religious and cultural leaders, and as partners and parents.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka

#87. Civility is the natural state for people who know how limited their own individual powers are and know, too, that they need the conversation.

David Brooks

#88. There is something about the state putting the power to bully into the hands of subnormal, sadistic apes that makes my blood boil.

Gore Vidal

#89. The Book of Job is advice on how to live in terms of the absolute power of nature. Leviathan is advice on how to live in terms of the absolute power of the state.

Donald Phillip Verene

#90. The theoretically unrestricted right to develop power, to wage war against other states, is antisocial and is doubly dangerous, because the state as a mass entity represents a low moral and intellectual level.

Christian Lous Lange

#91. We know that laws ought to be obeyed only if they come out of people's sense of justice, not because the state needs them to preserve its power. Laws devised for the depravity of power are as worthless as the paper they are printed on.

Aleksandar Hemon

#92. I don't underestimate the power of mental preparation throughout all of my training. I'm in a much better state of mind about competition.

Amanda Beard

#93. There is as far as I know, no example in history, of any state voluntarily ceding power from the centre to its constituent parts.

Charles Handy

#94. The true patriot is motivated by a sense of responsibility and out of self interest for himself, his family, and the future of his country to resist government abuse of power. He rejects the notion that patriotism means obedience to the state.

Ron Paul

#95. I have seen the rise of fascism and communism. Both philosophies glorify the arbitrary power of the state ... But both theories fail. Both deny those God-given liberties that are the inalienable right of each person on this planet, indeed, they deny the existence of God.

Ronald Reagan

#96. To the less privileged it was this arbitrariness that made the regime's power feel so oppressive. There were no clear principles or regulations which enabled the individual to challenge authority or the state.

Orlando Figes

#97. A man's wife has more power over him than the state has.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#98. Cricket pays well, so a lot of people are naturally drawn towards the game. But to carve a niche in non-cricket sports is not easy. So state governments need to be proactive. Indians need to be made aware of the power of an Olympic medal. It should be treated at par with an Oscars or a Nobel Prize.

Gagan Narang

#99. Gaiety is forgetfulness of the self, melancholy is memory of the self: in that state the soul feels all the power of its roots, nothing distracts it from its profound homeland and the look that it casts upon the outer world is gently dismayed.

Adrienne Monnier

#100. Throughout the history of the United States , war has been the primary impetus behind the growth and development of the central state. It has been the lever by which presidents and other national officials have bolstered the power of the state in the face of tenacious popular resistance.

Bruce D. Porter