Albert J. Nock Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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

  Giving, States, Proportion

  44 Copy quote

• Like all predatory or parasitic institutions, its first instinct is that of self-preservation. All its enterprises are directed first towards preserving its own life, and, second, towards increasing its own power and enlarging the scope of its own activity. For the sake of this it will, and regularly does, commit any crime which circumstances make expedient.

  Albert J. Nock

  Self, Sake, Firsts

  "The Criminality of the State". "The American Mercury" Magazine, March 1939.

  60 Copy quote

• 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

  Important, Moments

  55 Copy quote

• There are two methods, or means, and only two, whereby man's needs and desires can be satisfied. One is the production and exchange of wealth; this is the economic means. The other is the uncompensated appropriation of wealth produced by others; this is the political means.

  Albert J. Nock

  Mean, Men, Two

  "Our Enemy, the State" by Albert J. Nock (p. 59), 1935.

  27 Copy quote

• 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

  Exercise, Hands, Citizens

  "On Doing the Right Thing and Other Essays". Book by Albert J. Nock, Harper & Brothers Publishers, New York and Londo, 1928.

  24 Copy quote

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

  Albert J. Nock

  Way, Units, One Way

  16 Copy quote

• Another strange notion pervading whole peoples is that the State has money of its own; and nowhere is this absurdity more firmly fixed than in America. The State has no money. It produces nothing. It existence is purely parasitic, maintained by taxation; that is to say, by forced levies on the production of others. 'Government money,' of which one hears so much nowadays, does not exist; there is no such thing.

  Albert J. Nock

  Government, America, Doe

  25 Copy quote

• 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

  Class, Ideas, Criminals

  "The Criminality of the State". "The American Mercury" Magazine, March 1939.

  20 Copy quote

• 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

  Simple, Government, Want

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  Ideas, Roots, Serious

  "Our Enemy, The State". Book by Albert Jay Nock, Caldwell, Idaho, Caxton Press, 1950.

  16 Copy quote

• 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

  Moral Fiber, Law, Proud

  "On Doing the Right Thing". "The American Mercury" Magazine, 1925.

  8 Copy quote

• According to my observations, mankind are among the most easily tamable and domesticable of all creatures in the animal world. They are readily reducible to submission, so readily conditionable (to coin a word) as to exhibit an almost incredibly enduring patience under restraint and oppression of the most flagrant character. So far are they from displaying any overweening love of freedom that they show a singular contentment with a condition of servitorship, often showing a curious canine pride in it, and again often simply unaware that they are existing in that condition.

  Albert J. Nock

  Character, Pride, Animal

  "Memoirs of a Superfluous Man" by Albert J. Nock, (p. 314), 1943.

  26 Copy quote

• The State, on the other hand, both in its genesis and by its primary intention, is purely anti-social. It is not based on the idea of natural rights, but on the idea that the individual has no rights except those that the State may provisionally grant him. It has always made justice costly and difficult of access, and has invariably held itself above justice and common morality whenever it could advantage itself by so doing.

  Albert J. Nock

  Rights, Ideas, Justice

  "Our Enemy, the State" by Albert J. Nock (p. 49), 1935.

  20 Copy quote

• 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

  Inspirational, Learning, Parenting

  Harper's Magazine, Vol. 154, (p. 730), 1927.

  14 Copy quote

• If you do not want the State to act like a criminal, you must disarm it as you would a criminal; you must keep it weak. The State will always be criminal in proportion to its strength; a weak State will always be as criminal as it can be, or dare be, but if it is kept down to the proper limit of weakness - which, by the way, is a vast deal lower limit than people are led to believe - its criminality may be safely got on with.

  Albert J. Nock

  Believe, People, Weakness

  9 Copy quote

• It is easier to seize wealth than to produce it, and as long as the State makes the seizure of wealth a matter of legalized privilege, so long will the squabble for that privilege go on.

  Albert J. Nock

  Long, Goes On, Matter

  18 Copy quote

• Americans have a strange notion that the ordinary laws of economics do not apply to them. So doubtless they will think they are prosperous if the boom starts, and that deficits and indebtedness are merely signs of how prosperous they are.

  Albert J. Nock

  Thinking, Law, Ordinary

  7 Copy quote

• Considering mankind's indifference to freedom, their easy gullibility and their facile response to conditioning, one might very plausibly argue that collectivism is the political mode best suited to their disposition and their capacities. Under its regime, the citizen, like the soldier, is relieved of the burden of initiative and is divested of all responsibility, save for doing as he is told.

  Albert J. Nock

  Responsibility, Political, Soldier

  "Memoirs of a Superfluous Man" by Albert J. Nock, (p. 319), 1943.

  15 Copy quote

• Money does not pay for anything, never has, never will. It is an economic axiom as old as the hills that goods and services can be paid for only with goods and services.

  Albert J. Nock

  Money, Doe, Pay

  4 Copy quote

• The State did not originate in any form of social agreement, or with any disinterested view of promoting order and justice. Far otherwise. The State originated in conquest and confiscation, as a device for maintaining the stratification of society permanently into two classes-an owning and exploiting class, relatively small, and a propertyless dependent class. . . . No State known to history originated in any other manner, or for any other purpose than to enable the continuous economic exploitation of one class by another.

  Albert J. Nock

  Views, Agreement, Order

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  Money, War, States

  16 Copy quote

• 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

  Tariffs, Libertarian, Reason

  21 Copy quote

• It is interesting to observe that in the year 1935 the average individual's incurious attitude towards the phenomenon of the State is precisely what his attitude was toward the phenomenon of the Church in the year, say, 1500. It does not appear to have occurred to the Church-citizen of that day, any more than it occurs to the State-citizen of the present, to ask what sort of institution it was that claimed his allegiance.

  Albert J. Nock

  Attitude, Average, Years

  10 Copy quote

• It is easy to prescribe improvement for others; it is easy to organize something, to institutionalize this or that, to pass laws, multiply bureaucratic agencies, form pressure groups, start revolutions, change forms of government, tinker at political theory. The fact that these expedients have been tried unsuccessfully in every conceivable combination for 6,000 years has not noticeably impaired a credulous unintelligent willingness to keep on trying them again and again.

  Albert J. Nock

  Agency, Government, Years

  12 Copy quote

• 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

  Taken, Office, Towns

  4 Copy quote

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