state-power

Updated: June 18, 2025

So that our poor culture, which is flouted as so unpractical, leads us to the very ideas capable of meeting the great want of our present embarrassed times! We want an authority, and we find nothing but jealous classes, checks, and a dead-lock; culture suggests the idea of the State. We find no basis for a firm State-power in our ordinary selves; culture suggests one to us in our best self.

Matthew Arnold - Culture and Anarchy

And, forasmuch as the State, in its ideal, was "the organ of our collective best self," our first duty was to cultivate, each man for himself, what in himself was best in short, Perfection. "We find no basis for a firm State-power in our ordinary selves; culture suggests one to us in our best self."

George William Erskine Russell - Matthew Arnold