The State and the Power of Death

"Enumerate the usual prerogatives of the state and it becomes plain that each and every one of them embodies the meaning of death: exile, imprisonment, slavery, conscription, impeachment, regulation of production or sales or prices or wages or competition or credit, confiscation, surveillance, execution, war. Whenever the authority of the state is exercised in such ways as these the moral basis of the authority remains the same: death. That is the final sanction of the state and it is the only one."

William Stringfellow, A Keeper of the Word, 226