Murray Rothbard Quotes

Quotes about:

• The State is, and always has been, the great single enemy of the human race, its liberty, happiness, and progress.

  Murray Rothbard

  Race, Enemy, Liberty

  115 Copy quote

• There can be no such thing as 'fairness in taxation.' Taxation is nothing but organized theft, and the concept of a 'fair tax' is therefore every bit as absurd as that of 'fair theft.'

  Murray Rothbard

  Liberty, Taxation, Fairness

  136 Copy quote

• The State is a gang of thieves writ large - the most immoral, grasping and unscrupulous individuals in any society.

  Murray Rothbard

  Thieves, Gang, Individual

  113 Copy quote

• The man who puts all the guns and all the decision-making power into the hands of the central government and then says, ‘Limit yourself’; it is he who is truly the impractical utopian.

  Murray Rothbard

  Men, Gun, Hands

  116 Copy quote

• It is easy to be conspicuously 'compassionate' if others are being forced to pay the cost.

  Murray Rothbard

  Liberty, Cost, Libertarian

  Murray Rothbard (2009). “Review of Austrian Economics, Volume 8”, Ludwig von Mises Institute

  122 Copy quote

• States have always needed intellectuals to con the public into believing that its rule is wise, good, and inevitable

  Murray Rothbard

  Wise, Believe, States

  Murray Newton Rothbard (1978). “For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto”, p.13, Ludwig von Mises Institute

  93 Copy quote

• It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.

  Murray Rothbard

  Ignorance, Discipline, People

  "The Speech Pope Francis Should Have Given" by Lawrence W. Reed, fee.org. September 24, 2015.

  103 Copy quote

• The natural tendency of government, once in charge of money, is to inflate and to destroy the value of the currency.

  Murray Rothbard

  Government, Natural, Currency

  25 Copy quote

• Throughout history governments have been chronically short of revenue. The reason should be clear: unlike you and me, governments do not produce useful goods and services that they can sell on the market; governments, rather than producing and selling services, live parasitically off the market and off society.

  Murray Rothbard

  Government, Like You, Reason

  27 Copy quote

• All government operation is wasteful, inefficient, and serves the bureaucrat rather than the consumer.

  Murray Rothbard

  Government, Operations, Consumers

  52 Copy quote

• Equality is not in the natural order of things, and the crusade to make everyone equal in every respect (except before the law) is certain to have disastrous consequences.

  Murray Rothbard

  Order, Law, Natural

  89 Copy quote

• Briefly, the State is that organization in society which attempts to maintain a monopoly of the use of force and violence in a given territorial area; in particular, it is the only organization in society that obtains its revenue not by voluntary contribution or payment for services rendered but by coercion.

  Murray Rothbard

  Organization, Use, Coercion

  Murray Newton Rothbard (19??). “The Anatomy of the State”, p.11, Ludwig von Mises Institute

  15 Copy quote

• We libertarians are not the spokesmen for any ethnic or economic class; we are the spokesmen for all classes, for all of the public; we strive to see all of these groups united, hand-in-hand, in opposition to the plundering and privileged minority that constitutes the rulers of the State.

  Murray Rothbard

  Hands, Class, Groups

  118 Copy quote

• What do intellectuals and opinion makers get from big government? An increasing number of cushy jobs in the bureaucracy, or in the government-subsidized sector, staffing the welfare regulatory state, and apologizing for its policies, as well as propagandizing for them among the public. To put it bluntly, intellectuals, theorists, pundits, media elites, etc. get to live a life which they could not attain on the free market, but which they can gain at taxpayer expense.

  Murray Rothbard

  Jobs, Government, Media

  34 Copy quote

• Scratch an egalitarian, and you will inevitably find a statist.

  Murray Rothbard

  Scratches

  15 Copy quote

• We must, therefore, emphasize that 'we' are not the government; the government is not 'us.' The government does not in any accurate sense 'represent' the majority of the people. But, even if it did, even if 70 percent of the people decided to murder the remaining 30 percent, this would still be murder and would not be voluntary suicide on the part of the slaughtered minority. No organicist metaphor, no irrelevant bromide that 'we are all part of one another,' must be permitted to obscure this basic fact.

  Murray Rothbard

  Suicide, Government, People

  91 Copy quote

• Monetary expansion is a massive scheme of hidden redistribution.

  Murray Rothbard

  Expansion, Schemes, Massive

  19 Copy quote

• Every man must have freedom, must have the scope to form, test, and act upon his own choices, for any sort of development of his own personality to take place. He must, in short, be free in order that he may be fully human.

  Murray Rothbard

  Men, Order, Choices

  Murray N. Rothbard (2011). “Economic Controversies”, p.601, Ludwig von Mises Institute

  26 Copy quote

• The great non sequitur committed by defenders of the State, is to leap from the necessity of society to the necessity of the State.

  Murray Rothbard

  Liberty, Libertarian, States

  Murray N. Rothbard (2015). “The Ethics of Liberty”, p.187, NYU Press

  26 Copy quote

• The more the government intervenes to delay the market's adjustment, the longer and more grueling the depression will be, and the more difficult will be the road to complete recovery.

  Murray Rothbard

  Recovery, Government, Delay

  Robert Wenzel, Murray Rothbard (2014). “Austrian School Business Cycle Theory”, p.23, Lulu.com

  50 Copy quote

• Rule by the statist elite is not benign or simply a matter of who happens to be in office: it is rule by a growing army of leeches and parasites battening off the income and wealth of hard-working Americans, destroying their property, corrupting their customs and institutions, sneering at their religion.

  Murray Rothbard

  Hard Work, Army, Office

  49 Copy quote

• It is curious that people tend to regard government as a quasi-divine, selfless, Santa Claus organization. Government was constructed neither for ability nor for the exercise of loving care; government was built for the use of force and for necessarily demagogic appeals for votes. If individuals do not know their own interests in many cases, they are free to turn to private experts for guidance. It is absurd to say that they will be served better by a coercive, demagogic apparatus.

  Murray Rothbard

  Exercise, Organization, Government

  Murray N. Rothbard (2004). “Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, Scholar's Edition”, p.1302, Ludwig von Mises Institute

  34 Copy quote

• The libertarian sees the State as a giant gang of organized criminals, who live off the theft called "taxation" and use the proceeds to kill, enslave, and generally push people around. Therefore, any property in the hands of the State is in the hands of thieves, and should be liberated as quickly as possible. Any person or group who liberates such property, who confiscates or appropriates it from the State, is performing a virtuous act and a signal service to the cause of liberty.

  Murray Rothbard

  Hands, People, Liberty

  91 Copy quote

• Only the State legally obtains its revenue by coercion.

  Murray Rothbard

  Coercion, States, Revenue

  9 Copy quote

• It is in war that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society.

  Murray Rothbard

  Peace, War, Pride

  Murray N. Rothbard (2015). “The Ethics of Liberty”, p.196, NYU Press

  49 Copy quote

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