Theda Skocpol Quotes

There is no force greater than the state force.

The governments of the great States have two instruments for keeping the people dependent, in fear and obedience: a coarser, the army; and a more refined, the school.

You get the same order of criminality from any State to which you give power to exercise it; and whatever power you give the State to do things for you carries with it the equivalent power to do things to you.

The measure of the state's success is that the word anarchy frightens people, while the word state does not.

All wars come to an end, at least temporarily. But the authority acquired by the state hangs on; political power never abdicates.

In the twentieth century one of the most personal relationships to have developed is that of the person and the state. It's become a fact of life that governments have become very intimate with people, most always to their detriment.

The keystone of the Fascist doctrine is its conception of the State, of its essence, its functions, and its aims. For Fascism the State is absolute, individuals and groups relative.

The government is formed and the seat of power is safe.

The passion and will for freedom is always contradicted by the necessity of the state.

Government is nothing but regulated force; force is its appropriate claim upon your attention

Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil.

Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.

Many and subtle are the ideological weapons that the State has wielded through the centuries. Once excellent weapon has been tradition. The longer that the rule of a State has been able to preserve itself, the more powerful this weapon; for then, the X Dynasty or the Y State has the seeming weight of centuries of tradition behind it.

No power in the country can dissolve the government.

We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.

Governments don't control things. A government can't control the economy without controlling people.

What evidence do we have that states are incapable of further exercising an authority they have exercised successfully for over 200 years?

The State, on the other hand, both in its genesis and by its primary intention, is purely anti-social. It is not based on the idea of natural rights, but on the idea that the individual has no rights except those that the State may provisionally grant him. It has always made justice costly and difficult of access, and has invariably held itself above justice and common morality whenever it could advantage itself by so doing.

If the state is strong, it crushes us. If it is weak, we perish.

States are violent to the extent that they have the power to act in the interests of those with domestic power

With the shock of war the state comes into its own again.

Instead of recognizing the State as ‘the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men,’ the run of mankind, with rare exceptions, regards it not only as a final and indispensable entity, but also as, in the main, beneficent. The mass-man, ignorant of its history, regards its character and intentions as social rather than anti-social; and in that faith he is willing to put at its disposal an indefinite credit of knavery, mendacity and chicane, upon which its administrators may draw at will.

It is beyond dispute that the state exercises very great power over human life and it always shows a tendency to go beyond the limits laid down for it.

Government is the greatest combination for forces known to human society. It can command more men and raise more money than any and all other agencies combined.

A state is absolute in the sense which I have in mind when it claims the right to a monopoly of all the force within the community, to make war, to make peace, to conscript life, to tax, to establish and disestablish property, to define crime, to punish disobedience, to control education, to supervise the family, to regulate personal habits, and to censor opinions. The modern state claims all of these powers, and, in the matter of theory, there is no real difference in the size of the claim between communists, fascists, and Democrats.