“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
See more on GoodReads
“I understood that the reason we have to accept other people is simply because God receives us just the way we are. Yes, all of us to the last person...
I had never thought it should be that way. Had I been doing it, I would have arranged gradations of acceptability according to how bad or how good we were--or how hard we have tried. But... the Power who broods over our aching world has quite a different idea: He persists in receiving us and loving us all even when we reject Him and refuse to have anything to do with Him, even when we strut our little intellects and insist that He does not exist.”
― Catherine Marshall, quote from Christy
“Gifts of the heart can't be claimed by anyone except the giver.”
― Nicholas Sparks, quote from The Wedding
“There are parts of Texas where a fly lives ten thousand years and a man can't die soon enough. Time gets strange there from too much sky, too many miles from crack to crease in the flat surface of the land.”
― Katherine Dunn, quote from Geek Love
“It's against my principles to buy a book I haven't read, it's like buying a dress you haven't tried on.”
― Helene Hanff, quote from 84, Charing Cross Road
“We can never understand. We can only try, fumbling our way through the tunneled places, reaching for light.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from Pandemonium
Goodbye, Columbus an...
Dombey and Son
Auto-da-Fé
Girls in Pants: The...
Dreams from My Fathe...
The Dream of the Red...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
