State Preservation Quotes

A good subject makes it his rule to prefer the public welfare to everything else, bravely to sacrifice his fortune, and his private interests, and even his life, for the preservation of the state; and to employ all his abilities and his industry to advance the honor, and to procure the advantage of his native country.

You have modestly expressed a desire to know whether those who have recently died in war, fighting in defence of the church of God and for the preservation of the Christian religion and of the state, or those who may in 'he future fall in the same cause, may obtain indulgence for their sins. We confidently reply that those who, out of love to the Christian religion, shall die in battle fighting bravely against pagans or unbelievers, shall receive eternal life.

Generally in war the best policy is to take a state intact; to ruin it is inferior to this.

A State without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.

... we have gratefully to receive from the hand of God the institution of the state with its magistrates as a means of preservation.... On the other hand ... by virtue of our natural impulse, we must ever watch against the danger which lurks for our personal liberty in the power of the state.

Some of them, in accepting the proposed plan of government, coupled their acceptance with a recommendation of various additions to the Constitution, which they deemed essential to the preservation of the rights of the States, or of the People.

We therefore ... are pleased to grant indulgence to these men, allowing Christians the right to exist again and set up their places of worship; provided always that they do not offend against public order. In return ... it will be the duty of Christians to pray to God for our recovery [and] ... that the state may be preserved from danger.

If, for the smallest faults, the people had a right to resist or depose their sovereign, no prince could maintain his authority, and the community would be continually distracted; such a situation would be directly contrary both to the end and institution of government, and of sovereignty. It is therefore right to overlook the lesser faults of sovereigns, and to have a regard to the laborious and exalted office, with which they are invested for our preservation

Russia will preserve itself as a unitary state by all means. This will take place either through the civilized constitutional process or through crude force, arbitrary rule and dictatorship.

We must hold fast to the austere but true doctrine as to what really governs politics and saves or destroys states. Having in mind things true, things elevated, things just, things pure, things amiable, things of good report; having these in mind, studying and loving these, is what saves states.

A prince must be prudent enough to know how to escape the bad reputation of those vices that would lose the state for him, and must protect himself from those that will not lose it for him, if this is possible; but if he cannot, he need not concern himself unduly if he ignores these less serious vices.

Like twentieth-century Iran, the remnant of the Persian Empire, Ethiopia under Haile Selassie attempted to preserve the absolutist state throught an accommodation with modernizing forces in his own terms without completely subduing traditionalists. This was not a strategy of Haile Selassie's own choosing. Instead, he was overtaken by events and forced to deal with contradictions that were from the very beginning too formidable to be managed in the long term.

Mark what unvary'd laws preserve each state, Laws wise as Nature, and as fixed as Fate.