Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Quarters
Benefit
Instinct
Benefits
Already
Asks
Confiscated
State
Beggar
States
Quarter
More quotes by Albert J. Nock
Assuming that man has a distinct spiritual nature, a soul, why should it be thought unnatural that under appropriate conditions of maladjustment, his soul might die before his body does or that his soul might die without his knowing it?
Albert J. Nock
It is certainly true that whatever a man may do or say, the most significant thing about him is what he thinks and significant also is how he came to think it, why he continued to think it, or, if he did not continue, what the influences were which caused him to change his mind.
Albert J. Nock
Man tends always to satisfy his needs and desires with the least possible exertion.
Albert J. Nock
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
Like Prince von Bismarck in diplomacy, I have no secrets.
Albert J. Nock
When we speak freely, let us speak plainly, for plain speech is wholesome especially, plain speech about public affairs and public men.
Albert J. Nock
You get the same order of criminality from any State to which you give power to exercise it and whatever power you give the State to do things for you carries with it the equivalent power to do things to you.
Albert J. Nock
The glossary of politics is so full of euphemistic words and phrases - as in the nature of things it must be - that one would suppose politicians must sometimes strain their wits to coin them.
Albert J. Nock
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
In proportion as you give the state power to do things for you, you give it power to do things to you.
Albert J. Nock
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
The idea that the State originated to serve any kind of social purpose is completely unhistorical. It originated in conquest and confiscation - that is to say, in crime. It originated for the purpose of maintaining the division of society into an owning-and-exploiting class and a propertyless dependent class - that is, for a criminal purpose.
Albert J. Nock
For the majority of people liberty means only the system and the administrators they are used to.
Albert J. Nock
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
Perhaps the prevalence of pedantry may be largely accounted for by the common error of thinking that, because useful knowledge should be remembered, any kind of knowledge that is at all worth learning should be remembered too.
Albert J. Nock
The business of a scientific school is the dissemination of useful knowledge, and this is a noble enterprise and indispensable withal society can not exist unless it goes on.
Albert J. Nock
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
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
The State claims and exercises the monopoly of crime... It forbids private murder, but itself organizes murder on a colossal scale. It punishes private theft, but itself lays unscrupulous hands on anything it wants, whether the property of citizen or of alien.
Albert J. Nock
As Dr. Sigmund Freud has observed, it can not even be said that the State has ever shown any disposition to suppress crime, but only to safeguard its own monopoly of crime.
Albert J. Nock
