State Formation Quotes

State formation has been a brutal project, with many hideous consequences. But the results exist, and their pernicious aspects should be overcome. ~ Noam Chomsky

Africa is going through its own historical process of state formation just as Europe and America did. It is just happening much later than other continents because of the interruption of Africa's own historical development by the colonization of Africa by Europe. ~ John Prendergast

What we are looking for is the appearance of political units persisting in time and fixed in space, the development of permanent, impersonal institutions, agreement on the need for authority which can give final judgments and acceptance of the idea that this authority should receive the basic loyalty of its subjects. ~ Joseph Reese Strayer

PROPER ROLE OF THE STATE

I believe that the proper role of the state is negative, not positive; defensive, not aggressive. It is to protect, not to provide; for if the state is granted the power to provide for some, it must also be able to take from others, and that always leads to legalized plunder and loss of freedom. If the state can give us everything we want, it also must be powerful enough to take from us everything we have. Therefore, the proper function of the state is to protect the lives, liberty, and property of its citizens, nothing more. That state is best which governs least. ~ G. Edward Griffin

We (British) have reached the state where the private sector is that part of the economy the government controls and the public sector is that part that nobody controls. ~ James Goldsmith

So give up waiting as a state of mind. When you catch yourself slipping into waiting . . . snap out of it. Come into the present moment. Just be, and enjoy being. If you are present, there is never any need for you to wait for anything. So next time somebody says, "Sorry to have kept you waiting," you can reply, "That's all right, I wasn't waiting. I was just standing ~ Eckhart Tolle

I know something about killing. I don't like killing. And I don't think a state honors life by turning around and sanctioning killing. Now, that's just a personal belief that I have. ~ John F. Kerry

It's full of these grand structures that are possible only thanks to our greatest virtues – intelligence, planning, cooperation, vision. Things that you almost forget exist when evil, terror, and war ravage your country and become the normal state of affairs, ~ Zack Love

The political body, therefore, is also a moral being which has a will; and this general will, which tends always to the conservation and well-being of the whole and of each part of it ... is, for all members of the state ... the rule of what is just or unjust. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The state has an active role to play in ensuring that there is equilibrium between the constituent parts of the economy, the consumers and the producers. ~ Pierre Trudeau

That's why I believe in a Constitution which separates church from state. I've seen what happens when they get in cahoots. ~ Craig Ferguson

Do we need recourse to a happier state before the law in order to maintain that contemporary gender relations and the punitive production of gender identities are oppressive? ~ Judith Butler

The death penalty, I think, is a terrible scar on American justice, especially the concept of equal justice under law, but also of due process. And it goes state by state, and it's different in different states. ~ Burke Marshall

Getting close to nature is a wonderful way to fill our lives with spirituality and a sense of completion. Nature has an amazing power to purify the energy of our thoughts and emotions, returning us to our original, natural state. ~ Ilchi Lee

Ignorance of ignorance, then, is that self-satisfied state of unawareness in which man, knowing nothing outside the limited area of his physical senses, bumptiously declares there is nothing more to know! ~ Manly Hall

The Conservative party is at its strongest when it's not the party that says there is no role for government and the state should just get out of the way. That is not a strand of Conservative thinking that, by itself, is enough. ~ George Osborne

Securing, not prohibiting, the orderly transfer of wealth from A to B, based on wealth differentials, is the raison d'être of the [New Deal programs]. The contrast between the modern progressive and classical liberal agendas could not be more explicit. ~ Richard A. Epstein

One, state a hypothesis. Two, predict what will happen. Three, measure results. Four, assess lessons learned by comparing your predictions to actual outcomes. ~ Vijay Govindarajan

Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure - but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico, or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence, because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. ~ Edmund Burke

I think I am a very kind person. I think I'm joyful, but I could be kinder and I could be more joyful. I do believe peace is a state of grace, and not the absence of violence. ~ Dave Matthews

In Chile, everything from "kindergarten to cemeteries and community swimming pools were put out for bid." Between 1985 and 1992, over two thousand government industries were sold off throughout Latin America. Much of this property passed into the hands of either multinational corporations or Latin America's "superbillionaires," a new class that had taken advantage of the dismantling of the state to grow spectacularly rich. ~ Greg Grandin

This job has three requirements, each very strict. Do not agree to them lightly. Clerks in this store have followed these rules for nearly a century, and I will not have them broken now. ( ... ) Two: You may not browse, read, or otherwise inspect the shelved volumes. Retrieve them for members. That is all"
( ... )
"You must keep precise records of all transactions. The time. The customer's appearance. His state of mind. How he asks for the book. How he receives it. Does he appear to be injured. Is he wearing a sprig of rosemary on his hat. And so on ~ Robin Sloan

Tell the trial lawyers to get out of your state and to quit costing businessmen and women. ~ Rick Perry

Our principle is: to prevent all command over man by his fellowmen, to, make state, government, laws, or whatsoever form of compulsion existing, a thing of the past, to establish full freedom for all. Anarchism means first and foremost freedom from all government. ~ Johann Most

The argument that gay marriage doesn't affect straight marriages is a ridiculous red herring: Gay marriage affects society and law in dramatic ways. Religious groups will come under direct assault as federal and state governments move to strip them of their non-profit statuses if they refuse to perform gay marriages. ~ Ben Shapiro

This seems clear enough: When truly present in nature, we do use all our senses at the same time, which is the optimum state of learning. ~ Richard Louv

Virtue is not merely a state in conformity with the right principle, but one that implies the right principle; and the right principle in moral conduct is prudence. ~ Aristotle.

Love costs nothing except your state of being. ~ Debasish Mridha

It's sobering really," she thought, "how easy it is to reduce a human being to the state of an animal. You just take away some paraphernalia like clothing and put him in another environment. I bet that if I were to keep him there for a few months he would simply adapt to the swine lifestyle. A pity, but I haven't got time to experiment. But a few days, well, they are necessary to take his hope away and mollify his spirit. ~ Andrew Ashling

My thoughts were to become a dentist when I first went to Albany State. I didn't know where I would end up, but I knew I'd be happy, and I knew I would have a nice life. That was always my goal, to have a nice, happy life. That's, to me, being rich. ~ Steve Guttenberg

I had the same sensation as when we watch someone sleep. When asleep we all become children again. Perhaps because in the state of slumber we can do no wrong and are unconscious of life, the greatest criminal and most self- absorbed egotist are holy, by a natural magic, as long as they're sleeping. For me there's no discernible difference between killing a child and killing a sleeping man. ~ Fernando Pessoa

For the developing world, the past half-century has been a time of recurring hope and frequent disappointment. Great waves of change have washed over the landscape, from the crumbling of colonial hegemonies in mid-century to the recent collapse of Communist empires. But too often, what rushed in to replace the old order were empty hopes-not only in the false allure of state socialism, non-alignment and single-party rule, but also the false glories of romantic nationalism and narrow tribalism, and the false dawn of runaway individualism. ~ His Highness The Aga Khan

I was a little girl, I imagined that one day I'd fall in love with an amazing man and he'd love me in return. I believed love was enough to overcome anything. But love isn't like that. The heart has the capacity to love beyond anything my little-girl self could have dreamed up. And where I once thought love was a journey and the destination was being together, I now know that love is more like a state of awareness, and sometimes its best expression is in releasing the person from your life. ~ Lexi Ryan

I understand the protests, but not the shooting and the attempts to bring down the state. We cannot allow hatred to control our lives. We must remain unified to defeat this evil. ~ Boris Trajkovski

Do you remember the other day when you told me about you and Muck receiving communion up in the woods in the snow in Bastogne, and what you said to Muck - that if you died, you would die in a state of grace?" He said to me, 'Babe, I never forgot you telling me that. So when we shot that scene with Father Maloney giving communion, I put that in myself. I turned to the character Babe, and said, 'Well Heffron, if we die, we'll die in a state of grace.' Richard Speight did that on his own. That really affected me. ~ Edward Heffron

The whole red state/blue state thing is very interesting. Watching that shift over the years. ~ Anne Waldman

Any naturally self-aware self-defining entity capable of independent moral judgment is a human."

Eveningstar said, "Entities not yet self-aware, but who, in the natural and orderly course of events shall become so, fall into a special protected class, and must be cared for as babies, or medical patients, or suspended Compositions."

Rhadamanthus said, "Children below the age of reason lack the experience for independent moral judgment, and can rightly be forced to conform to the judgment of their parents and creators until emancipated. Criminals who abuse that judgment lose their right to the independence which flows therefrom."

(...) "You mentioned the ultimate purpose of Sophotechnology. Is that that self-worshipping super-god-thing you guys are always talking about? And what does that have to do with this?"

Rhadamanthus: "Entropy cannot be reversed. Within the useful energy-life of the macrocosmic universe, there is at least one maximum state of efficient operations or entities that could be created, able to manipulate all meaningful objects of thoughts and perception within the limits of efficient cost-benefit expenditures."

Eveningstar: "Such an entity would embrace all-in-all, and all things would participate within that Unity to the degree of their understanding and consent. The Unity itself would think slow, grave, vast thought, light-years wide, from Galactic mind to Galactic mind. Full understanding of that great ~ John C. Wright

The unveiled Algerian woman, who assumed an increasingly important place in revolutionary action, developed her personality, discovered the exalting realm of responsibility. The freedom of the Algerian people from then on became identified with woman's liberation, with her entry into history. This woman who, in the avenues of Algier or of Constantine, would carry the grenades or the submachine-gun chargers, this woman who tomorrow would be outraged, violated, tortured, could not put herself back into her former state of mind and relive her behaviour of the past; this woman who was writing the heroic pages of Algerian history was, in so doing, bursting the bounds of the narrow in which she had lived without responsibility, and was at the same time participating in the destruction of colonialism and in the birth of a new woman. ~ Frantz Fanon

Jesus from the moment he first appears in Galilee is a sign of contradiction, fomenting revolution through telling the truth about the state of the world, the reality of evil, and the eye of God, who judges in a different vein altogether than courts of law, whether they be religious canons, the ecclesiastical courts, or government legal systems. ~ Megan McKenna

Grief is an emotion that's almost unplayable because you're in a separate emotional state; it's an inconsolable emotion. ~ Nicolas Roeg

The sick in soul insist that it is humanity that is sick, and they are the surgeons to operate on it. They want to turn the world into a sickroom. And once they get humanity strapped to the operating table, they operate on it with an ax. ~ Eric Hoffer

IS [Islamic State] has played a major role in helping Bashar al-Assad to reposition Syria on the international scene. Now, it is almost impossible to come up with a solution that would exclude him. The political game appears to be very cynical indeed. ~ Tariq Ramadan

At any rate, during the few hours when the depressive state itself eased off long enough to permit the luxury of concentration, I had recently filled this vacuum with fairly extensive reading and I had absorbed many fascinating and troubling facts ~ William Styron

The welfare state may be well-intentioned, but it is a Ponzi scheme ~ Dennis Prager

Positive thoughts emanate when we are in a sate of joy and negative thoughts come when we are in a state of sorrow. ~ Girdhar Joshi

I will do everything in my power to prevent a Palestinian state ~ Naftali Bennett