Albert Jay Nock Quotes

#1. All the power [the State] has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn. Therefore every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power.

Albert Jay Nock

#2. American society is the only one which has passed directly from barbarism into decadence without once knowing civilisation.

Albert Jay Nock

#3. Koh-i-noor in a limestone-quarry as an article of that character

Albert Jay Nock

#4. I wonder how many such men in America would know that Communism, the New Deal, Fascism, Nazism, are merely so-many trade-names for collectivist Statism, like the trade-names for tooth-pastes which are all exactly alike except for the flavouring.

Albert Jay Nock

#5. 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 Jay Nock

#6. The positive testimony of history is that the State invariably had its origin in conquest and confiscation. No primitive State known to history originated in any other manner.

Albert Jay Nock

#7. 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 Jay Nock

#8. When a beggar asks us for a quarter, our instinct is to say that the State has already confiscated our quarter for his benefit, and he should go to the State about it.

Albert Jay Nock

#9. Passing from the tyranny of Charles I to the tyranny of Cromwell is like taking a turn in a revolving door; the exertion merely puts you back where you started. If every jobholder in Washington were driven into the Potomac tonight, their places would be taken tomorrow by others precisely like them.

Albert Jay Nock

#10. Teaching English literature would have seemed to us like teaching a hungry man the way to his mouth when he had a feast before him. Almost

Albert Jay Nock

#11. In proportion as you give the state power to do things for you, you give it power to do things to you.

Albert Jay Nock