Albert J. Nock
Albert J. Nock
Albert Jay Nockwas an influential American libertarian author, educational theorist, Georgist, and social critic of the early and middle 20th century...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth13 October 1870
CountryUnited States of America
Albert J. Nock quotes about
rights ideas justice
The State, 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.
drs crime monopoly
As Dr. Sigmund Freud has observed, it cannot even be said that the State has ever shown any disposition to suppress crime, but only to safeguard its own monopoly of crime.
mean men two
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.
country men feet
As a general principle, I should put it that a man's country is where the things he loves are most respected. Circumstances may have prevented his ever setting foot there, but it remains his country.
class way criminals
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.
way units one-way
There's only one way to improve society. Present it with a single improved unit: yourself.
inspirational learning parenting
The mind is like the stomach. It not how much you put into it, but how much it digests.
giving proportion states
In proportion as you give the state power to do things for you, you give it power to do things to you.
self doe sake
Like all predatory or parasitic institutions, the state's first instinct is that of self-preservati on. 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.
important moments
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.
people half way
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.
people effort publicity
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.
men ignorant letters
The position of modern science, as far as an ignorant man of letters can understand it, seems not a step in advance of that held by Huxley and Romanes in the last century.
thinking errors may
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.