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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

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Albert J. Nock
Age: 74 †
Born: 1870
Born: October 13
Died: 1945
Died: August 19
Autobiographer
Biographer
Essayist
Journalist
Philosopher
Sociologist
Scranton
Pennsylvania
State
Murder
Alien
Whether
Claims
Monopoly
Organizes
Hands
Private
Organize
Unscrupulous
States
Property
Aliens
Forbids
Anything
Exercise
Citizen
Punishes
Citizens
Scale
Colossal
Crime
Scales
Exercises
Wants
Lays
Theft

More quotes by Albert J. Nock

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Useless knowledge can be made directly contributory to a force of sound and disinterested public opinion.
Albert J. Nock
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The primary reason for a tariff is that it enables the exploitation of the domestic consumer by a process indistinguishable from sheer robbery.
Albert J. Nock
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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The only thing that the psychically-human being can do to improve society is to present society with one improved unit.
Albert J. Nock
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Organized Christianity has always represented immortality as a sort of common heritage but I never could see why spiritual life should not be conditioned on the same terms as all life, i. e., correspondence with environment.
Albert J. Nock
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Someone asked me years ago if it were true that I disliked Jews, and I replied that it was certainly true, not at all because they are Jews, but because they are folks, and I don’t like folks.
Albert J. Nock
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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
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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
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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