“But despotic governments do not recognize the precious human component of the state, seeing its citizens only as a faceless, mindless - and helpless - mass to be manipulated at will. It is as though people were incidental to a nation rather than its very life-blood. Patriotism, which should be the vital love and care of a people for their land, is debased into a smokescreen of hysteria to hide the injustices of authoritarian rulers who define the interests of the state in terms of their own limited interests.”
In Quest of Democracy (1991)
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Aung San Suu Kyi 86
State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National Leag… 1945Related quotes

Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956 https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/z4AdQy3VCmgC?hl=en (October 30, 2012).
Source: The Sword or the Cross, Which Should be the Weapon of the Christian Militant? (1921), Ch.4 p. 69-70
Context: None of us believes that rulers are infallible or that their commands should constitute our highest standard of right and wrong. Quite apart from the belief of the ruler, the method of war is either Christian or un-Christian, and his command does not determine whether our participation in it is moral or immoral. Therefore, the Christian citizen must come to his decision on a basis of the spirit and teaching of Jesus, quite independently of the command of the ruler. To say that Jesus and St. Paul recognize the function of the state is not to say that they command the Christian to participate in war when ordered to do so by the ruler of the nation; any more than their recognition of the state meant that they sanctioned human slavery, polygamy, extortion and the other evil practices which were approved by the [Roman] state.

Source: Neo-statecraft and Meta-geopolitics (2009), p.117