Daily Inspiration Quote by Albert J. Nock

A self-effacing shrug from Nock is never just modesty; it is an attack on a culture that confuses conviction with character. "As far as I know" matters: he stages humility as an epistemic checkpoint, a reminder that self-knowledge is partial and that certainty is often a pose. Then comes the real barb: "no pride of opinion". Nock treats opinion not as a badge to polish but as a provisional tool. The target is the modern habit of turning views into identity, then defending them like property.

For a thinker who distrusted mass politics and the moral vanity of reform movements, the line reads like a discipline: hold beliefs, but don’t let them hold you. Pride of opinion is what makes people unteachable; it turns argument into theater and disagreement into insult. Nock’s phrasing quietly strips away the ego-satisfaction that often rides shotgun with "having a take". He’s not claiming to be above bias; he’s signaling suspicion of the emotional payoff that comes from being right in public.

Contextually, Nock wrote in an America where newspapers, lecture circuits, and later radio rewarded hot certainty. His broader project - skeptical, elitist in the old sense of intellectual seriousness, allergic to crusading - required a kind of internal hygiene. The line performs that hygiene. It also functions as a trap for the reader: if you bristle at it, you’ve already proven his point.