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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

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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
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Thing
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Men
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More quotes by Albert J. Nock

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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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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
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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
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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
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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
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As far as I know, I have no pride of opinion.
Albert J. Nock
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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
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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
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Man tends always to satisfy his needs and desires with the least possible exertion.
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 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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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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For the majority of people liberty means only the system and the administrators they are used to.
Albert J. Nock
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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
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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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Above all things the mass-mind is most bitterly resentful of superiority. It will not tolerate the thought of an elite and under a political system of universal suffrage, the mass-mind is enabled to make its antipathies prevail.
Albert J. Nock
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I am said to be difficult of acquaintance, unwilling to meet any one half way, and showing a social manner which is easy, not diffident, but formal and unresponsive, tending constantly to hold people off.
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 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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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