State

If nationality is consent, the state is compulsion. – Henri Frederic Amiel

In the twentieth century one of the most personal relationships to have developed is that of the person and the state. Its become a fact of life that governments have become very intimate with people, most always to their detriment. – E. L. Doctorow

The State has but one face for me: that of the police. To my eyes, all of the States ministries have this single face, and I cannot imagine the ministry of culture other than as the police of culture, with its prefect and commissioners. – Jean Dubuffet

While the State becomes inflated and hypertrophied in order to obtain a firm enough grip upon individuals, but without succeeding, the latter, without mutual relationships, tumble over one another like so many liquid molecules, encountering no central energy to retain, fix and organize them. – Emile Durkheim

The State must follow, and not lead, the character and progress of the citizen. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

As high as mind stands above nature, so high does the state stand above physical life. Man must therefore venerate the state as a secular deity. The march of God in the world, that is what the State is. – G. W. F. Hegel

The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it — a State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes — will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished. – John Stuart Mill

Every new development for the last three centuries has brought men closer to a state of affairs in which absolutely nothing would be recognized in the whole world as possessing a claim to obedience except the authority of the State. The majority of people in Europe obey nothing else. – Simone Weil

The State is to make what is useful. The individual is to make what is beautiful. – Oscar Wilde