A Quote by John F. Kennedy

A police state finds that it cannot command the grain to grow.

John F. Kennedy

Quote Topics

Cannot Command Finds Grain Grow Police Police State State

Quote Author

John F. Kennedy
American - President
May 29, 1917 - November 22, 1963

The State has but one face for me: that of the police. To my eyes, all of the State's ministries have this single face, and I cannot imagine the ministry of culture other than as the police of culture, with its prefect and commissioners.

Jean Dubuffet

People were encouraged to snitch. [South Africa] was a police state, so there were police everywhere. There were undercover police. There were uniformed police. The state was being surveilled the entire time.

Trevor Noah

I mean a real police state just to get a token recognition of a law. It take, it took, I think, 15,000 troops and 6 million dollars to put one negro in the University of Mississippi. That's a police action, police state action.

Malcolm X

There's one overriding issue, namely, that we live in a police state so long as the police get to police themselves. And that is why cops go unindicted.

Russell Simmons

[Ayn] Rand accepts that when she supports military conscription, even indirectly. Also, she starts her politics from the premise that the State must have police power. She fails to take into account the inevitability that once you start with police power you're going to have a police State.

Murray Bookchin

Old trees in their living state are the only things that money cannot command.

Walter Savage Landor

People misunderstand what a police state is. It isn't a country where the police strut around in jackboots; it's a country where the police can do anything they like. Similarly, a security state is one in which the security establishment can do anything it likes.

John Lanchester

People in a hurry cannot think, cannot grow, nor can they decay. They are preserved in a state of perpetual puerility.

Eric Hoffer

You see these dictators up on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. They're afraid of words and thought. ... They make frantic efforts to bar our thoughts and words. ... A state of society where men may not speak their mind - where children denounce their parents to the police - where a businessman or small shopkeeper ruins his competitor by telling tales about his private opinion. Such a state of society cannot long endure if it is continually in contact with the healthy outside world.

Winston Churchill

A farmer is helpless to grow grain; all he can do is provide the right conditions for the growing of grain. He cultivates the ground, he plants the seed, he waters the plants, and then the natural forces of the earth take over and up comes the grain...This is the way it is with the Spiritual Disciplines - they are a way of sowing to the Spirit... By themselves the Spiritual Disciplines can do nothing; they can only get us to the place where something can be done.

Richard J. Foster

No man is fit to command another that cannot command himself.

William Penn

A Godly leader ... finds strength by realizing his weakness finds authority by being under authority finds direction by laying down his plans finds vision by seeing the needs of others finds credibility by being an example finds loyalty by expressing compassion finds honor by being faithful finds greatness by being a servant

Roy Lessin

One thing about a police state, you can always find the police.

L. Neil Smith

A man has to learn that he cannot command things, but that he can command himself; that he cannot coerce the wills of others, but that he can mold and master his own will: and things serve him who serves Truth; people seek guidance of him who is master of himself.