Quote#Politics & Power
Clearly, a great crime had been committed against this boy; yet…
Quote byAlbert Jay Nock · 1870–1945
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: "Anarchist's Progress" in The American Mercury (1927); § III : To Abolish Crime or to Monopolize It?.
English (original)
Clearly, a great crime had been committed against this boy; yet nobody who had had a hand in it — the judge, the jury, the prosecutor, the complaining witness, the policemen and jailers — felt any responsibility about it, because they were not acting as men, but as officials.
— Albert Jay Nock
You may also like
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 judge said he disliked to sentence the lad; it seemed the wrong thing to do; but the law left him no option. I was struck by this. The judge, then, was doing something as an official that he would not dream of doing as a man; and he …
The mind is like the stomach. It is not how much you put into it that counts, but how much it digests — if you try to feed it with a shovel you get bad results.
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 …
I believe that government is for the use of the people, and not the people for the use of the government.
My object is to collect into a common fold the stray sheep, to find a home for the pariahs of every nation. I do not then hesitate to notice the catchpennies hawked in the public streets, as well as the sumptuous volumes got up for the …
