Without moral support the very strength of a state becomes it's inherent danger.

A few weeks ago I got home from an annual long weekend in southern Kentucky and immediately caught whatever illness that my wife and daughter had been dealing with in while I was camping.  It wasn’t any big deal really, but one night I woke up at around 2 in the morning with a raging sore throat so decided to get out of bed to have some tea.  It so happened that a book was sitting out on the table, and with nothing better to do, I decided to read a few pages.  2 hours later, I decided it was time to get some more sleep.
This quote is one (of many) that I thought worth sharing (emphasis added) given many of the things that seem to be bothering us all these days:

The desire to have “more and more” is just as disastrous in the life of the state as in individual life.  If the state yields to this desire, it is the beginning of its end.  The enlargement of its territory, the superiority over its neighbors, the advance of its military or economic power, all this cannot avert the ruin of the state but rather hastens it,  The self-preservation of the state cannot be secured by its material prosperity nor can it be guaranteed by the maintenance of certain constitutional laws.  Written constitutions or legal charters have no binding force, if they are not the expression of the constitution that is written in the citizens’ minds.  Without moral support the very strength of a state becomes it’s inherent danger.

– Ernst Cassirer, The Myth of the State