David Mitchell Quotes

The State or the States.

The health of a nation is inversely proportional to the number of laws needed to govern it

In a corporate state, all attempts to reduce bureaucracy increase it.

Bureaucracy is the epoxy that greases the wheels of progress.

The better the state is established, the fainter is humanity. To make the individual uncomfortable, that is my task.

Anything that strengthens the private sector vs. the state is protective of personal freedom.

However many people complain about the "red tape," it would be sheer illusion to think ... continuous administrative work can be carried out in any field except by means of officials working in offices.... The choice is only that between bureaucracy and dillettantism.

Now what I contend is that my body is my own, at least I have always so regarded it. If I do harm through my experimenting with it, it is I who suffer, not the state.

Everything must be organized in the most rational way. The state won't accept excessive prices.

Whose property is my body? Probably mine. I so regard it. If I experiment with it, who must be answerable? I, not the State. If I choose injudiciously, does the state die? Oh, no.

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.

Christianity in its true sense puts an end to the State. It was so understood from its very beginning, and for that Christ was crucified.

Any one detail, followed through to its source, will usually reveal the general state of readiness of the whole organization.

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

The State, that cawing rookery of committees and subcommittees.

The state was made for man, not man for state.

The working class must break up, smash the "ready-made state machinery," and not confine itself merely to laying hold of it.

It is for the good of states that men should be deluded by religion.

We must recognize that personal freedoms diminish as the welfare state grows. The price of more and more public programs is less and less private freedom.

Education is still, in spite of private education, a state matter.

I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered !My life is my own.

The state exists for man, not man for the state. The same may be said of science. These are old phrases, coined by people who saw in human individuality the highest human value. I would hesitate to repeat them, were it not for the ever recurring danger that they may be forgotten, especially in these days of organization and stereotypes.

Screw State! State's always on the side of the blacks. The hell with them!

... if your heart and your honest body can be controlled by the state, or controlled by community taboo, are you not then, and in that case, no more than a slave ruled by outside force? What tyranny could exceed a tyranny that dictates to the human heart, and that attempts to dictate the public career of an honest human body?