Gerald Ford's famous paraphrasing of Nock's statement: "A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have."Address to Congress (08-12-74)
You get the same order of criminality from any State to which you give power to exercise it;
and whatever power you give the State to do things for you carries with it the equivalent power to do things to you.
— Albert Jay Nock, The Criminality of the State (1939)
(note that the famous version is often misattributed to Jefferson, Goldwater, or Reagan, but is actually from Gerald Ford)
The State always moves slowly and grudgingly towards any purpose that accrues to society’s advantage, but moves rapidly and with alacrity towards one that accrues to its own advantage; nor does it ever move towards social purposes on its own initiative, but only under heavy pressure, while its motion towards anti-social purposes is self-sprung.
