Nanny State Quotes

Central planning, judicial activism, and the nanny state all presume vastly more knowledge than any elite have ever possessed. ~ Thomas Sowell

It is time to let America be America again. To return freedom to the people. To stand on our founding principles and reject the cynical politics of the Nanny State. ~ Rick Perry

This modern mania for interfering in other's lives, usually under the guise of health and safety concerns, is highly irritating and counterproductive. Down with the nanny state. ~ Felix Dennis

...when you hit the expressway to Declinistan there are few exit ramps. That America's animating principles should require a defense at all is a melancholy reflection on how far we've already gone. Live free--or die from a thousand soothing caresses of nanny-state sirens. ~ Mark Steyn

Liberalism had come to mean spending more on everything-speech police, failed poverty programs that reward dependence, a bigger nanny state telling us we cannot eat fatty foods, workplace roles that stifle opportunity, and absurd environmental regulations. ~ John Stossel

The point is as long as it doesn't affect others in a negative manner then just do what you enjoy doing as often as possible, it's simple. That philosophy should underpin society and it's something that nanny states just don't get – that life's about enjoying yourself and if what you find enjoyable isn't harming anyone else then it should be of no interest to the state ~ Robert Breeze

The OCSD has been chipping away at our freedoms for most of our lives, all in the name of safety. But over-controlling something doesn't necessarily make it safer or better, even though people don't realize it. They believe the OCSD protects them and has their best interests at heart, but most of the OCSD's policies do more harm than good. ~ Tracy Lawson

…being specific is the essence of lawmaking and the whole difference between having a Congress and having a mom. ~ P.J. O'Rourke

I don't want to live in a nanny state where people are telling me where I can go and what I can do. ~ Rand Paul

Kuala Lumpur had a certain something… There was a sense of freedom perhaps, of anarchy even, that Singapore so sorely lacked. Perhaps it was the lack of deference to authority, the physical space, the ability to take a step back and enjoy a moment of quite that lent Kuala Lumpur its atmosphere. Singaporeans were always adding to the list of reasons each one kept to hand, in case they met a Malaysian, of why it was so much better on the island than the peninsula. They ranged from law and order to cleanliness, from clean government to good schools, and always ended on the strength of the Singaporean economy. But in the end, the Malaysian would nod as if to agree to the points made – and then shrug to indicate that they probably wouldn't trade passports, not really. And if pressed for a reason they would fall back on that old chestnut which somehow seemed to capture everything that was wrong about Singapore – but your government bans chewing gum. The nanny state and the police state all rolled into one. ~ Shamini Flint

I think Franklin Roosevelt was a lousy president. What he did- which is to impose this great nanny state on America- was a great mistake. ~ Ed Crane

The crusade to convince us that global warming can only be dealt with by wealth destruction and higher energy prices began with an effort to 'raise awareness,' which turned into some delicate nanny-state prodding before efforts to artificially inflate prices. ~ David Harsanyi

The nannyism is partly to distract from the corruption - and partly just another opportunity to leverage it. A good general rule is that the more a government wants to run its citizens' lives, the worse job it will do at the most basic tasks of government. ~ Glenn Reynolds

Living most of my life in New York, I witnessed plenty of nanny state laws. Later, I lived in D.C. for a bit and saw even more. I assumed when I got to Colorado, the Wild West, there would be a rejection of such intrusive legislation. I was wrong. ~ David Harsanyi

Under the constitution, there was never meant to be a federal police force. Even an FBI limited only to investigations was not accepted until this century. Yet today, fueled by the federal government's misdirected war on drugs, radical environmentalism, and the aggressive behavior of the nanny state, we have witnessed the massive buildup of a virtual army of armed regulators prowling the States where they have no legal authority. The sacrifice of individual responsibility and the concept of local government by the majority of American citizens has permitted the army of bureaucrats to thrive. ~ Ron Paul

The right to evaluate risk for oneself is part of what it means to be a functioning human being. ~ Mark Steyn

President Obama just made his first presidential trip to the state of Utah. Obama spent his time in Utah just like you'd expect - telling people, 'Uh, no, I don't play for the Jazz.' ~ Jimmy Fallon

But those who believe that what our people desire is big government are living in a state of delusion. ~ Marco Rubio

The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens ... Henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere. ~ Leo Tolstoy

North Dakota is a great state. Everybody is real supportive up there. I couldn't ask for a better place to call home. ~ Travis Hafner

I thought, man, if you could run 100 miles, you'd be in this Zen state. You'd be the f**king Buddha. Bringing peace and a smile to the world. In my case, it didn't work. I'm the same old punk ass as ever. But there's always this hope that it'll turn you into the person you want to be. You know, like a better, more peaceful person. And when I'm out on a long run, the only thing in life that matters is finishing the run. For once, my brain isn't going 'bleh bleh bleh bleh.' Everything just quiets down, and the only thing going on is pure flow ~ Jenn Shelton

Hey, I try and have an open container with me no matter what state I'm in." She ~ Craig Johnson

I think the notion of dreaming in a time where we are told that it is foolish, futile or not useful is one of the most revolutionary things we can do. To have our lives determined by our dreams of a free world
instead of reactions to a state-imposed reality
is one of the most powerful tools of decolonization. ~ Harsha Walia

To be free of insistence [free of forcing one's own opinion] is the path of Vitragta [attachment-free state, the enlightened one]. Quit insisting at all places. To even insist on the truth, God has considered it as ignorance. There is no insistence in 'Us' whatsoever! ~ Dada Bhagwan

Our duties naturally emerge form such fundamental relations as our families, neighborhoods, workplaces, our state or nation. Make it your regular habit to consider your roles-parent, child, neighbor, citizen, leader-and the natural duties that arise from them. Once you know who you are and to whom you are linked, you will know what to do. ~ Epictetus

If America is to survive, we must elect more God-centered men and women to public office; individuals who will seek Divine guidance in the affairs of state. ~ Billy Graham

Since the Cuban Revolution and since the invasion of Santo Domingo a state of emergency has existed in Latin America. The Marines shoot at anything that moves, regardless of partyaffiliation. ~ Regis Debray

Two years had passed, and still I had not told the boys anything. I had not told them that their grandfather was gay. I wanted to. I wanted them to know. It seemed like every month a new state was taking up the issue of gay marriage, and it seemed like every month another teenager killed himself because he was being mocked or threatened or bullied for being gay, and I wanted my sons to know that I considered this the most important moral issue we faced as a country since Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King... ~ Gregory Martin

Being raised a Jew in southern California in the 1950s and 1960s, my religious training emphasized learning the Hebrew language and Jewish festivals, history, and culture. We also remembered the Holocaust and supported the newly formed Jewish state of Israel. ~ Rick Strassman

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

State action is like love: If you have doubts that you are in it, you probably are not. ~ Peter F. Lake

Voltaire rejects all systems, and suspects that "every chief of a sect in philosophy has been a little of a quack."

"The further I go, the more I am confirmed in the idea that systems of metaphysics are for philosophers what novels are for women."

"It is only charlatans who are certain. We know nothing of first principles. It is truly extravagant to define God, angels, and minds, and to know precisely why God formed the world, when we do not know why we move our arms at will."

"Doubt is not a very agreeable state, but certainty is a ridiculous one. ~ Will Durant

The world we know at present is in no fit state to take over the dreariest little meteor ... If we have the courage and patience, the energy and skill, to take us voyaging to other planets, then let us use some of these to tidy up and civilize this earth. One world at a time, please. ~ J.B. Priestley

Kids nowadays ... tend to go overboard [on] protein - something I believe to be totally unnecsssary ... [I state in] my formula for basic good eating: Eat about one gram of protein for every two pounds of body weight. ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger

By taking out a loan, I am committing myself to years of interest repayments, and therefore to years of wage slavery. And the U.K. has been borrowing like crazy since 1694, when the Bank of England was invented. This means that we are locked into high taxation to pay for 300 years of wars and other costly and generally disastrous state enterprises. ~ Tom Hodgkinson

Christian, you are the state lottery, the cure for cancer, and the three wishes from Aladdin's lamp all rolled into one ~ E.L. James

I think wearables in general have, as their best calling, to better understand our current state and needs and to express those back to the world. ~ Astro Teller

We celebrate the beauty and reason of the individual, and resist the coercion of the state and the tyranny of the majority. We laugh and cry about the bullshit 'liberal' and 'conservative' pigeonholes that people throw themselves into. They think we favor violence, but I've been taught how to fight, and you'll probably never find anyone less likely to harm a living creature. ~ Robert Peate

A theoretical system does not merely state facts which have been observed and that logically deducible relations to other facts which have also been observed. ~ Talcott Parsons

I'm going back in," I said as I turned toward the door. Clay sprang to his feet before I reached it and crowded behind me. I looked down at him then back at Rachel, who watched us with an enormous grin. "Looks like another guy who can't take his eyes off you. Living with you is going to be a riot." She laughed and picked up the towels. "Let's all go in. The neighbor's tree is going to shade the deck soon anyway." Having little choice, I opened the door for Clay. His fur brushed my bare thighs as he moved past me into the house. His head came to about my sternum. He really was huge...a huge problem. Sam had warned me Clay had taken my speech as an invitation to live together. At least, Clay had shown up in his fur. However, any relief I might have felt went unnoticed as I contemplated how he'd found me in a completely different state. If Sam told him, I'd have to kill Sam. Since I didn't have the stomach for outright murder, I'd break his coffee maker. I ~ Melissa Haag

... we might be drawn into a more left-centric way of hearing ... and experience the promotion of safety as a somewhat mechanical process in which A inevitably leads to B-- [ie: the belief that 'my being in a ventral state will automatically draw you into one, and if it doesn't then there is something wrong with one of us'.]

Viewing it that way encourages us to turn social engagement into a technique, even a manipulation of the other person's nervous system toward what we view as a more desirable state. Ironically, when the left hemisphere is dominant rather than supportive of right-centric attending, we have already moved out of social engagement and thus are in no position to offer safe space to another. When we make an effort to return to it, we have forgotten that neuroception is continually arising automatically and not under the control of our will.

The very pressure to activate ventral makes the space between us unsafe. ~ Bonnie Badenoch

We are complex, and therefore, in our natural state, inconsistent, beings, and the opinion of this hour need not be the opinion of the next. ~ James Anthony Froude

I go into a meditative state but I don't follow a path that people who meditate take, like sitting in a room and getting quiet. It is when I swim that I meditate. ~ Benoit Lecomte

I am an adherent of the ideal of democracy, although I well know the weaknesses of the democratic form of government. Social equality and economic protection of the individual appeared to me always as the important communal aims of the state. Although I am a typical loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has preserved me from feeling isolated. ~ Albert Einstein

I think many thinkers and activists, even in the Islamist parties like the Muslim Brotherhood, and the people who left the Muslim Brotherhood to follow Abou el-Fatouh, these people do have an understanding that the relationship between religion and the state must be re-thought and re-assessed. They're not going to use the concept of secularism in any straightforward way, because the concept of secularism is still far too loaded in that part of the world. ~ Tariq Ramadan

My struggle led to the reunification of Germany and the creation of the state of Europe. We destroyed the borders; globalisation is on the horizon. ~ Lech Walesa

It became quite clear to me that the Natural Law mystique, in Catholic, libertarian or neo-pagan forms, remains basically a set of rhetorical strategies to hypnotize others into the state which Bernard Shaw called "barbarism" and defined as 'the belief that the laws of one's own tribe are the laws of the universe'. ~ Robert Anton Wilson

In the state of nature ... all men are born equal, but they cannot continue in this equality. Society makes them lose it, and they recover it only by the protection of the law. ~ Baron De Montesquieu

By the middle twentieth century, few European nation-states had not at one time or another figured themselves as 'the outpost of Western Christian civilisation': France, imperial Germany, the Habsburg Reich, Poland with its self-image as przedmurze (bastion), even tsarist Russia. Each of these nation-state myths identified "barbarism" as the condition or ethic of their immediate eastward neighbour: for the French, the Germans were barbarous, for the Germans it was the Slavs, for the Poles the Russians, for the Russians the Mongol and Turkic peoples of Central Asia and eventually the Chinese. ~ Neal Ascherson

There is no way of deliverance from the state and condition of being in the flesh, but by the Spirit of Christ. ~ John Owen

Amplifying atoms is more subtle than amplifying electromagnetic waves because atoms can only change their quantum state and cannot be created. Therefore, even if one could amplify gold atoms, one would not realize the dreams of medieval alchemy. ~ Wolfgang Ketterle

Neutral state of mind has got me arriving on time, being far enough not to hide, leave the moment behind and fly, fly my child through your mind. ~ Michael M.

The West hasn't reached its universal state as yet, although its close to it, but it certainly has evolved out of its warring state phase, which it was in for a couple of centuries. ~ Samuel P. Huntington

Salvation is about restoration--not merely restoration to the original state in Eden, but to the attainment of the goal of Eden. ~ Ralph Smith

I stood up to the liberal elite when they came to our state (Alabama) and tried to eliminate the death penalty, we won, they lost. ~ Troy King

I had been secretary of state for eight years, attorney general for four years, lieutenant governor for four years, and governor for four years - I had all these friends around the country - so I thought I could gin up a campaign not for me but against George W. Bush, against his war, against his economic policies, and against his education policies. ~ Don Siegelman

In writing the first edition of Japan's International Relations we aimed to provide a comprehensive analysis of Japan as a normal state, rather than as an aberrant or abnormal state. ~ Glenn D. Hook

I saw a ghost when I was staying at Dartington Hall in Devon in the 1960s. I think there are many different kinds of entities, some are scary and some aren't, it depends on the state of mind you're in when you are confronted. I found that quite scary because it appeared when I was asleep, so it was quite a shock, but the other ones I've encountered, I didn't find scary. I have a lot more understanding of them. ~ Martin Shaw

In these pages, we keep returning to one foundational principle: providing the possibility of emotional/relational safety for our people, be they patients, children, partners, friends or strangers.

We are able to make this offer when they are experiencing their own neuroception of safety, not continuously, but as the baseline to which we return after our system has adaptively moved into sympathetic arousal or dorsal withdrawal in response to inner and outer conditions.

When we neuroceive safety, we humans automatically begin to open into vulnerability, and the movement of our "inherent treatment plan" (Sills, 2010) has a greater probability of coming forward.

When we have a neuroception of threat, we adaptively tighten down at many levels, from physical tension to activation of the protective skills we have learned over a lifetime (Levine, 2010). In that state, our innate healing path will often wisely stay hidden until more favorable conditions arrive. ~ Bonnie Badenoch

When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion. ~ William James

But remember that the pain of parting from friends will be felt by every body at times, whatever be their education or state. ~ Jane Austen