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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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Albert J. Nock
Age: 74 †
Born: 1870
Born: October 13
Died: 1945
Died: August 19
Autobiographer
Biographer
Essayist
Journalist
Philosopher
Sociologist
Scranton
Pennsylvania
Great
Necessary
Things
Learning
Would
Forget
Process
Means
Culture
Many
Concerning
Mean
Forgetting
More quotes by Albert J. Nock
As sheer casual reading matter, I still find the English dictionary the most interesting book in our language.
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
For the majority of people liberty means only the system and the administrators they are used to.
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
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
The simple truth is that our businessmen do not want a government that will let business alone. They want a government they can use.
Albert J. Nock
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
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
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
Like Prince von Bismarck in diplomacy, I have no secrets.
Albert J. Nock
As might be supposed, my parents were quite poor, but we somehow never seemed to lack anything we needed, and I never saw a trace of discontent or a failure in cheerfulness over their lot in life, as indeed over anything.
Albert J. Nock
Considered now as a possession, one may define culture as the residuum of a large body of useless knowledge that has been well and truly forgotten.
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
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
The mentality of an army on the march is merely so much delayed adolescence it remains persistently, incorrigibly and notoriously infantile.
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
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
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
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 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
