“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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“When I was in the desert, I woke each day and carried on with my life, but it wasn’t living; it was merely existing. I want to live. You are where I live.”
― Renee Ahdieh, quote from The Rose & the Dagger
“It's the most charming thing about humans. You are all so sure that the lesser animals are bleeding with envy because they didn't have the good fortune to be born Homo sapiens.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from La voz de los muertos
“The pain on his face mirroring the pain in my heart.”
― Staci Hart, quote from A Thousand Letters
“I told him God didn’t invent grocery stores. He told me that I had no proof of this, and wouldn’t I feel stupid when I died and went to heaven and saw God’s Food Mart? I told him that was a dumb name for a grocery store. He told me that I couldn’t do any better. I told him God’s grocery store was named God’s Amazing Food Emporium and that they had weekly specials on the Body Of Christ Sourdough bread loaves. He told me I was sacrilegious. I told him we weren’t any kind of religious.”
― T.J. Klune, quote from Bear, Otter, and the Kid
“William had played [rugby] at Eton when it first became popular, and now he only spoke of it in a reverent tone he normally saved only for women and rifles. . . . .
[in contrast] Cricket had rules: one was not allowed to stamp on the head of another player and pass it off as enthusiasm.”
― Natasha Pulley, quote from The Watchmaker of Filigree Street
Shame
Titus Andronicus
Wicked
Grass
Shatter Me Complete...
Pandora's StarBookQuoters 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.
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