“Kindness is not an illusion and violence is not a rule. The true resting state of human affairs is not represented by a man hacking his neighbor into pieces with a machete. That is a sick aberration. No, the true state of human affairs is life as it ought to be lived.”
“As soon as any man says of the affairs of the State "What does it matter to me?" the State may be given up for lost.”
“Secrecy is the first essential in affairs of state.”
“The state tends to make man an instrument to serve its arbitrary ends, overlooking his individual purposes. And since man, in his essence, is a free searching self perfecting being, it follows that the state is a profoundly anti human institution. That is, its actions are incompatible with the full harmonious development of human potential in its richest diversity. Hence incompatible with the true end of man…!”
“In the Bible, shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight--a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed, a state of affairs that inspires joyful wonder as its Creator and Savior opens doors and welcomes the creatures in whom he delights. Shalom, in other words, is the way things ought to be.”
“In his book "Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift", Paul Rahe writes, "Human dignity is bound up with taking responsibility for conducting one's own affairs." But today the state cocoons "one's own affairs" so thoroughly as to remove almost all responsibility from modern life, and much of human dignity with it. And, if personal consequences have been all but abolished, societal consequences are harder to dodge...A society of children cannot survive, no matter how all-embracing the government nanny.”