If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.
E. O. Wilson

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.
John Stuart Mill

A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.
John Stuart Mill

Once the state has been founded, there can no longer be any heroes. They come on the scene only in uncivilized conditions.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.
Baruch Spinoza

For peace is not mere absence of war, but is a virtue that springs from, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.
Baruch Spinoza

Sin cannot be conceived in a natural state, but only in a civil state, where it is decreed by common consent what is good or bad.
Baruch Spinoza

If nationality is consent, the state is compulsion.
Henri Frederic Amiel

Care is a state in which something does matter; it is the source of human tenderness.
Rollo May

Complacency is a state of mind that exists only in retrospective: it has to be shattered before being ascertained.
Vladimir Nabokov

The man who prefers his country before any other duty shows the same spirit as the man who surrenders every right to the state. They both deny that right is superior to authority.
Lord Acton

Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

First of all, Arafat is wrong. Jerusalem is Israel's capital, will never be divided, and will remain the capital of the State of Israel, the capital of the Jewish people, for ever and ever.
Benjamin Netanyahu

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone.
James Baldwin

I'm actually forced to write about Michigan because as a native of that state it's the place I know best.
Jim Harrison

The Federal Government should be the last resort, not the first. Ask if a potential program is truly a federal responsibility or whether it can better be handled privately, by voluntary organizations, or by local or state governments.
Donald Rumsfeld

Russia needs a strong state power and must have it. But I am not calling for totalitarianism.
Vladimir Putin

Musicians can run this state better than politicians. We won't get a lot done in the mornings, but we'll work late and be honest.
Kinky Friedman

And I think musicians can better run this state than politicians. And, hell, beauticians can better run the state than politicians.
Kinky Friedman

War is regarded as nothing but the continuation of state policy with other means.
Karl Von Clausewitz