“The fathers of American Democracy had no exaggerated respect for the State, because they were pre-eminently men of reason and common sense. They never, for instance, identified the State with the People. They knew that the State is, by very definition, an instrument of oppression and coercion, and their idea was to make it strong enough to keep order and ward off enemies, and limit it otherwise very strictly.”

— Dorothy Thompson

Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
Source: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
p. 102

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 14, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The fathers of American Democracy had no exaggerated respect for the State, because they were pre-eminently men of reas…" by Dorothy Thompson?

Dorothy Thompson 77

American journalist and radio broadcaster 1893–1961

Related quotes

“The root problem is very simply stated: if there were no sovereign independent states, if the states of the civilized world were organized in some sort of federalism as the states of the American Union, for instance, are organized, there would be no international war as we know it. ... The main obstacle is nationalism.”

Norman Angell (1872–1967) British politician

Statement of 1933, as quoted in Journal of Peace Studies (1994), p. 54; also partly quoted in Logic (1989) by Robert Baum, p. 87

“It is the state that is robbing all classes, rich and poor, black and white alike; it is the state that is ripping us all off; it is the state that is the common enemy of mankind.”

Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995) American economist of the Austrian School, libertarian political theorist, and historian

Murray Rothbard, “The Noblest Cause of All,” Address to the Libertarian Party Convention (1977), Lewrockwell.com https://www.lewrockwell.com/1970/01/murray-n-rothbard/the-noblest-cause-of-all/

“In the strictly Marxist sense, there is not even in Soviet Russia a state socialism but a state capitalism.”

Wilhelm Reich book The Mass Psychology of Fascism

Preface to the Third Edition (August 1942)
The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933)
Context: In the strictly Marxist sense, there is not even in Soviet Russia a state socialism but a state capitalism. According to Marx, the social condition "capitalism" does not consist in the existence of individual capitalists, but in the existence of the specific "capitalist mode of production", that is, in the production of exchange values instead of use values, in wage work of the masses and in the production of surplus value, which is appropriated by the state or the private owners, and not by the society of working people. In this strictly Marxist sense, the capitalistic system continues to exist in Russia. And it will continue to exist as long as the masses of people continue to lack responsibility and to crave authority.

“Cannabis: The reason it's not in the Constitution is because letting states and individuals decide is in the Constitution. That thing of beauty is called the Tenth Amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

" Whodunit? Who Meddled With Out Democracy? https://www.unz.com/imercer/whodunit-who-meddled-with-our-democracy/" February 8, 2018, The Unz Review.
2010s, 2018

“A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the State with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated by it as enemies.”

Henry David Thoreau book Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience (1849)

“God has not given to us (in this state of existence) more than very limited powers of expression of one's ideas and feelings”

Ada Lovelace (1815–1852) English mathematician, considered the first computer programmer

Context: Circumstances have been such, that I have lived almost entirely secluded for some time. Those who are much in earnest and with single minds devoted to any great object in life, must find this occasionally inevitable.... You will wonder at having heard nothing from me; but you have experience and candour enough to perceive and know that God has not given to us (in this state of existence) more than very limited powers of expression of one's ideas and feelings... I shall be very desirous of again seeing you. You know what that means from me, and that it is no form, but the simple expression and result of the respect and attraction I feel for a mind that ventures to read direct in God's own book, and not merely thro' man's translation of that same vast and mighty work.

In a letter to Andrew Crosse, as quoted in Eugen Kölbing's Englische Studien, Volume 19 https://archive.org/stream/englischestudien19leipuoft#page/157/mode/1up (1894), Leipzig; O.R. Reisland, "Byron's Daughter", p. 157.

“Any class analysis of the United States shows very clearly that black people are the most oppressed group of people inside the United States. We have suffered the most from racism and exploitation, cultural degradation and lack of political power. It follows from the laws of revolution that the most oppressed will make the revolution.”

James Forman (1928–2005) American civil rights leader

Source: "The Black Manifesto" (1969), p. 116

“It will be remembered, that the object of the several states in the adoption of that instrument, was not the establishment of a general consolidated government, which should swallow up the state sovereignties, and annihilate their several jurisdictions, and powers, as states; but a federal government, with powers limited to certain determinate objects; viz. their intercourse and concerns with foreign nations; and with each other, as separate and independent states; and, as members of the same confederacy: leaving the administration of their internal, and domestic concerns, to the absolute and uncontrolable jurisdiction of the states, respectively; except in one or two particular instances, specified, and enumerated in the constitution.”

St. George Tucker (1752–1827) Bermudan lawyer and judge

https://books.google.com/books?id=NTQ0AQAAMAAJ&pg=RA1-PA412 Page 412
Blackstone’s Commentaries (1803)

“I believe deeply that it's very important to the United States, to the economic health of the United States, that we maintain a strong dollar.”

Timothy Geithner (1961) American central banker and politician

Meeting with Japanese reporters at the U.S. embassy, November 11, 2009 http://www.businessinsider.com/geithner-we-care-about-a-strong-dollar-really-2009-11

“[The fascist states want no war] Why? Because the fascist states realize before our very eyes, among Aryans, without gold, without Jews, without Freemasons, the famous socialist program, of which the communists have had their mugs full and have never brought off. [100]”

Louis-ferdinand Céline (1894–1961) French writer

L'Ecole des cadavres (1938)

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Dorothy Thompson 77

Related quotes

Related topics