State Morality Quotes

States are supposed to have interests but no principles. I have principles but no interests.

You must legislate morality.

There will be no morality in the world unless the Emperor abdicates as quickly as circumstances permit…. The Emperor bears responsibility for being extremely negligent in the performance of his duties. He permitted the behavior of the military cliques and for many years did not do what he should have done.

The modern state appeals to morality, to religion, and to natural law as the ideological foundation of its existence. At the same time it is prepared to infringe any or all of these in the interest of self-preservation.

Powerful states can maintain themselves only by crime, little states are virtuous only by weakness.

The commerce in sexual stimulation and auto-eroticism, for its own sake, unrelated to marriage, procreation, or familial relations is an evil, an obscenity... detrimental to the health and morality of the state

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.

A government cannot be truly just without affirming the intrinsic value of human life.

The moment that the state came into conflict with the higher power, the moment that it set itself up as an end in itself, it became identified with Augustine's earthly city and lost all claims to a higher sanction than the law of force and self-interest. Without justice, what is a great kingdom but a great robbery, magnum latrocinium?

Placing the state in charge of moral principles is equivalent to putting the proverbial fox in charge of the chicken coop.