Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state.

It [the State] has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they penetrate to every act of the citizen, however secret; it has begun to throw around its operations the high dignity and impeccability of a State religion; its agents become a separate and superior caste, with authority to bind and loose, and their thumbs in every pot. But it still remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men.

Socialism and interventionism. Both have in common the goal of subordinating the individual unconditionally to the state.

If you make the state responsible for everything, you shouldn't be surprised when you end up with a state that bears some resemblance to a dictatorship.

The divine impeccability of the immortal [Soviet] State turned out not only to have suppressed individual human beings but also to have defended them, to have comforted them in their weakness, to have justified their insignificance. The State had taken on its own shoulders the entire weight of responsibility; it had liberated people from the chimera of conscience.

But on the other hand government takes away a certain amount of liberty and in some countries it takes away all of liberty. And it will, everywhere, if people who fight government do not fight government any longer.

The government continues to erode our freedom.

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

Advocating the expansion of the powers of the state is treason to mankind

My mind is appalled at the thought of a political party having control of all the details that go to make up the sum total of our lives. Think of it for an instant, that the party in power shall have all authority to dictate the kind of books that shall be used in our schools and universities, government officials editing, printing, and circulating our literature, histories, magazines and press, to say nothing of the thousand and one activities of life that a people engage in, in a civilized society.

The basic principle that governs the relation between a state and its people --a total and unconditional subordination and submission of individuals and classes to the state…

The modern state does not comprehend how anyone can be guided by something other than itself. In its eyes pluralism is treason.

I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war on liberty, and that the democratic government is at least as bad as any of the other forms.

Socialists cry “Power to the people”, and raise the clenched fist as they say it. We all know what they really mean - power over people, power to the State.

We are living in a highly organized state of socialism. The state is all; the individual is of importance only as he contributes to the welfare of the state. His property is only his as the state does not need it. He must hold his life and his possessions at the call of the state.

As soon as people drop the reins on government, government will leash the people.

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.

The modern State exists not to protect our rights but to do us good or make us good - anyway, to do something to us or to make us something. Hence the new name 'leaders' for those who were once 'rulers'. We are less their subjects than their wards, pupils, or domestic animals. There is nothing left of which we can say to them, 'Mind your own business.' Our whole lives are their business.

The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.

War is the Health of the State.

It is inevitable, that eventually the people will demand absolute security from the state... And absolute security is absolute slavery.

You want to keep more of the money you earn? I'm afraid that's very selfish. We shall want to tax that away. You want to own shares in your firm? We can't have that. The state has to own your firm. You want to choose where to send your children to school? That's very divisive. You'll send your child where we tell you.

Government money only pays for the "liberties" the government thinks you should have, and therefore it can determine how you exercise them. That turns liberties into privileges dispensed at the whim of the state.