Albert J. Nock Quotes

Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.

The governments of the great States have two instruments for keeping the people dependent, in fear and obedience: a coarser, the army; and a more refined, the school.

The measure of the state's success is that the word anarchy frightens people, while the word state does not.

Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

The passion and will for freedom is always contradicted by the necessity of the state.

Government has ever been careful to hold a high hand over the education of the people. They know, better than anyone else, that their power is based almost entirely on the school. Hence, they monopolize it more and more.

The real needs of the people ought never give way to the imaginary wants of the state.

Government is no sooner created than it becomes too strong for society, and shapes and moulds, as well as controls it.

Politics is the art of stopping people from minding their own business.

Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil.

Government is a necessary evil

A little government involvement is just as dangerous as a lot - because the first leads inevitably to the second.

Autonomous state actions will regularly take forms that attempt to reinforce the authority, political longevity, and social control of the state.

Government [is] an illusion the governed should not encourage.

As government grows, freedom recedes.

All government is an ugly necessity.

Government is the greatest combination for forces known to human society. It can command more men and raise more money than any and all other agencies combined.

The state itself becomes more and more identified with the interests of those who run things than with the interests of the people in general.

The capitalist class rules but does not govern: it contents itself with ruling the government.

Government is never more dangerous than when our desire to have it help us blinds us to its great power to harm us.

Government is the natural enemy of freedom.

The problem is big government. If whoever controls government can impose his way upon you, you have to fight constantly to prevent the control from being harmful. With small, limited government, it doesn't much matter who controls it, because it can't do you much harm.

The State did not own men so entirely, even when it could send them to the stake, as it sometimes does now where it can send them to the elementary school.

A state is absolute in the sense which I have in mind when it claims the right to a monopoly of all the force within the community, to make war, to make peace, to conscript life, to tax, to establish and disestablish property, to define crime, to punish disobedience, to control education, to supervise the family, to regulate personal habits, and to censor opinions. The modern state claims all of these powers, and, in the matter of theory, there is no real difference in the size of the claim between communists, fascists, and Democrats.

Government is not infallible. Government is only an executive control, a centralized authority for the purpose of expressing the will of the people; before you have a government you must have the people. Without the people there can be no government. The government must be, therefore, an expression of the will of the people.