“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, quote from Our Enemy the State
“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, quote from Our Enemy the State
“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, quote from Our Enemy the State
“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, quote from Our Enemy the State
“Instead of recognizing the State as “the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men,” the run of mankind, with rare exceptions, regards it not only as a final and indispensable entity, but also as, in the main, beneficent.”
― Albert Jay Nock, quote from Our Enemy the State
Albert Jay Nock
Born place: in Scranton, Pennsylvania, The United States
Born date October 13, 1870
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“The Indian criminal justice system was a market like garbage, Abdul now understood. Innocence and guilt could be bought and sold like a kilo of polyurethane bags.”
― Katherine Boo, quote from Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
“Ariana, there's a small rodent on your face. Thought you should know."
"It's a mustache. Kyra assured me that it's extremely convincing.”
― Bridget Zinn, quote from Poison
“No. I’ve been thinking about this for weeks. I say in my talks it takes two things to make it happen again, a new Hitler and social conditions like in the thirties. But that’s not true. It takes three things: the Hitler, the conditions…and the people to follow the Hitler.” “And don’t you think he’d find them?” “No, not enough of them. I really think people are better and smarter now, not so much thinking their leaders are God. The television makes a big difference. And history, knowing…Some he’d find, yes; but no more, I think—I hope—than the pretend-Hitlers we have now, in Germany and South America.”
― Ira Levin, quote from The Boys from Brazil
“I could see my face, crying, in her blank eye.”
― M.T. Anderson, quote from Feed
“When the sun sets like fire,
I will think of you,
when the moon casts its light,
I'll remember, too,
if a soft rain falls gently,
I'll stand in this place,
recalling the last time,
I saw your kind face.
Good fortune go with you,
to your journey's end,
let the waters run calmly,
for you, my dear friend.”
― Brian Jacques, quote from Loamhedge
The Left Hand of God
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The Long Hard Road O...
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