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There's only one way to improve society. Present it with a single improved unit: yourself.

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
Improved
Units
Improve
Single
Present
Society
Way
Unit

More quotes by 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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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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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 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
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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 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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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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As far as I know, I have no pride of opinion.
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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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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The competition of social power with State power is always disadvantaged, since the State can arrange the terms of competition to suit itself, even to the point of outlawing any exercise of social power whatever in the premises in other words, giving itself a monopoly.
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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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
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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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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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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
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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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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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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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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