Overnight quotations

From Albert Jay Nock:

“I once voted at a Presidential election. There being no real issue at stake, and neither candidate commanding any respect whatever, I cast my vote for Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi. I knew Jeff was dead, but I voted on Artemus Ward’s principle that if we can’t have a live man who amounts to anything, by all means let’s have a first-class corpse. I still think that vote was as effective as any of the millions that have been cast since then.”

And on a more serious note:

“Even a successful revolution, even if such a thing were conceivable, against the military tyranny which is Statism’s last expedient, would accomplish nothing. The people would be as thoroughly indoctrinated with Statism after the revolution as they were before, and therefore the revolution would be no revolution, but a coup d’Etat, by which the citizen would gain nothing but a mere change of oppressors. There have been many revolutions in the last twenty-five years, and thus has been the sum of their history. They amount to no more than an impressive testimony to the great truth that there can be no right action except there be right thinking behind it.As long as the easy, attractive, superficial philosophy of Statism remains in control of the citizen’s mind, no beneficent social change can be affected, whether by revolution or by any other means.”

Author: S. Smith