The State

State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it tells lies too; and this lie crawls out of its mouth: “I, the state, am the people.” That is a lie! It was creators who created peoples and hung a faith and a love over them: thus they served life.

It is annihilators who set traps for the many and call them “state”: they hang a sword and a hundred appetites over them.

Where there is still a people, it does not understand the state and hates it as the evil eye and the sin against customs and rights.

This sign I give you: every people speaks its tongue of good and evil, which the neighbor does not understand. It has invented its own language of customs and rights. But the state tells lies in all the tongues of good and evil; and whatever it says it lies – and whatever it has it has stolen…

[I]t will give you everything if you will adore it, this new idol: thus it buys the splendor of your virtues and the look of your proud eyes. It would use you as bait for the all-too-many…

[B]ehold the superfluous! They steal the works of the inventors and the treasures of the sages for themselves; “education” they call their theft – and everything turns to sickness and misfortune for them…

[O]nly where the state ends, there begins the human being who is not superfluous: there begins the song of necessity, the unique and inimitable tune…

 – Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra