Quote

It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own.

Albert J. Nock

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Albert J. Nock
Age: 74 †
Born: 1870
Born: October 13
Died: 1945
Died: August 19
Autobiographer
Biographer
Essayist
Journalist
Philosopher
Sociologist
Scranton
Pennsylvania
Power
States
Antiwar
Wells
Unfortunately
Well
None
Understood
State
War
Money

More quotes by Albert J. Nock

Image
Personal publicity of every kind is utterly distasteful to me, and I have made greater efforts to escape it than most people make to get it.
Albert J. Nock
Image
The practical reason for freedom is that freedom seems to be the only condition under which any kind of substantial moral fiber can be developed - we have tried law, compulsion and authoritarianism of various kinds, and the result is nothing to be proud of.
Albert J. Nock
Image
The question of who is right and who is wrong has seemed to me always too small to be worth a moment's thought, while the question of what is right and what is wrong has seemed all-important.
Albert J. Nock
Image
Concerning culture as a process, one would say that it means learning a great many things and then forgetting them and the forgetting is as necessary as the learning.
Albert J. Nock
Image
It would seem that in Paine's view the code of government should be that of the legendary King Pausole, who prescribed but two laws for his subjects, the first being, Hurt no man, and the second, Then do as you please.
Albert J. Nock
Image
Taking the State wherever found, striking into its history at any point, one sees no way to differentiate the activities of its founders, administrators and beneficiaries from those of a professional-criminal class.
Albert J. Nock
Image
The superficial distinctions of Fascism, Bolshevism, Hitlerism, are the concern of journalists and publicists the serious student sees in them only one root-idea of a complete conversion of social power into State power.
Albert J. Nock
Image
When politicians say I'm in politics, it may or may not be possible to trust them, but when they say, I'm in public service, you know you should flee.
Albert J. Nock
Image
The State always moves slowly and grudgingly towards any purpose that accrues to society's advantage, but moves rapidly and with alacrity towards one that accrues to its own advantage nor does it ever move towards social purposes on its own initiative, but only under heavy pressure, while its motion towards anti-social purposes is self-sprung.
Albert J. Nock
Image
Driving jobholders out of office is like the old discredited policy of driving prostitutes out of town. Their places are immediately taken by others who are precisely like them.
Albert J. Nock
Image
Money does not pay for anything, never has, never will. It is an economic axiom as old as the hills that goods and services can be paid for only with goods and services.
Albert J. Nock
Image
The positive testimony of history is that the State invariably had its origin in conquest and confiscation. No primitive State known to history originated in any other manner.
Albert J. Nock
Image
When a beggar asks us for a quarter, our instinct is to say that the State has already confiscated our quarter for his benefit, and he should go to the State about it.
Albert J. Nock
Image
The civilization of a country consists in the quality of life that is lived there, and this quality shows plainest in the things that people choose to talk about when they talk together, and in the way they choose to talk about them.
Albert J. Nock
Image
Perhaps one reason for the falling-off of belief in a continuance of conscious existence is to be found in the quality of life that most of us lead. There is not much in it with which, in any kind of reason, one can associate the idea of immortality.
Albert J. Nock
Image
The mind is like the stomach. It is not how much you put into it that counts, but how much it digests...
Albert J. Nock
Image
Diligent as one must be in learning, one must be as diligent in forgetting otherwise the process is one of pedantry, not culture.
Albert J. Nock
Image
I have often wondered why the sounds of the beating drums do not make the marching soldiers shoot their officers and go home.
Albert J. Nock
Image
Like Prince von Bismarck in diplomacy, I have no secrets.
Albert J. Nock
Image
The mentality of an army on the march is merely so much delayed adolescence it remains persistently, incorrigibly and notoriously infantile.
Albert J. Nock