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Albert Jay Nock Quotes

1870–1945 United States

Albert Jay Nock (13 October 1870 – 19 August 1945) was an American author, educational theorist, libertarian, social critic of the early and middle 20th century, and a philosophical founder of the modern, libertarian conservative movement later embraced by Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, and Ron Paul.

United States
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Also known as: Nock

Random Albert Jay Nock quote

49 quotes

You do not know, and will never know, who the Remnant are, nor what they are doing or will do.

Isaiah's Job (1936)

As against Jesus, the historic choice of the mass-man goes regularly to some Barabbas.

Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (1943)

In any given society the Remnant are always so largely an unknown quantity.

Isaiah's Job (1936)

The mentality of an army on the march is merely so much delayed adolescence; it remains persistently, incorrigibly and notoriously infantile.

Our Enemy, the State (1935)

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.

Our Enemy, the State (1935)

According to my observations, mankind are among the most easily tamable and domesticable of all creatures in the animal world.

Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (1943)

They accepted the fact that there are practicable ranges of intellectual and spiritual experience which nature has opened to some and closed to others.

Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (1943)

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.

Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (1943)

The State, then, whether primitive, feudal or merchant, is the organization of the political means.

Our Enemy, the State (1935)

I have always been singularly free of envy, jealousy, covetousness; I but vaguely understand them.

Autobiographical Sketch (1939)

"Democratic" State practice is nothing more or less than State practice.

As far back as one can follow the run of civilization, it presents two fundamentally different types of political organization. This difference is not one of degree, but of kind.

Our Enemy, the State (1935)

The Remnant, on the other hand, want only the best you have, whatever that may be. Give them that, and they are satisfied; you have nothing more to worry about.

Isaiah's Job (1936)

Our preceptors were gentlemen as well as scholars. There was not a grain of sentimentalism in the institution; on the other hand, the place was permeated by a profound sense of justice.

Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (1943)

Above all things the mass-mind is most bitterly resentful of superiority. It will not tolerate the thought of an elite; and under a political system of universal suffrage, the mass-mind is enabled to make its antipathies prevail.

Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (1943)

This idea was vague at the moment, as I say, and I did not work it out for some years, but I think I never quite lost track of it from that time.

The superficial distinctions of Fascism, Bolshevism, Hitlerism, are the concern of journalists and publicists; the serious student sees in them only one root-idea of a complete conversion of social power into State power.

The practical reason for freedom is that freedom seems to be the only condition under which any kind of substantial moral fiber can be developed — we have tried law, compulsion and authoritarianism of various kinds, and the result is nothing to be proud of.

A prophet of the Remnant will not grow purse-proud on the financial returns from his work, nor is it likely that he will get any great renown out of it.

Isaiah's Job (1936)

Here we get on track of what conservatism is.

A Little Conserva-tive (1936)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Albert Jay Nock (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.