Top 34 Murray N. Rothbard Quotes
#1. Social power is the power over nature, the living standards achieved by men in mutual exchange. State power, as we have seen, is the coercive and parasitic seizure of this production - a draining of the fruits of society for the benefit of nonproductive (actually antiproductive) rulers.
Murray N. Rothbard
#3. In war, State power is pushed to its ultimate, and, under the slogans of "defense" and "emergency," it can impose a tyranny upon the public such as might be openly resisted in time of peace.
Murray N. Rothbard
#5. Where the questions concern governmental power in a sovereign nation, it is not possible to select an umpire who is outside government. Every national government, so long as it is a government, must have the final say on its own power.
Murray N. Rothbard
#6. Passports were originally created to provide safe conduct in time of war. During most of the eighteenth century it seldom occurred to Europeans to abandon their travels in a foreign country which their own was fighting.
Murray N. Rothbard
#7. Capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism, and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism. Not only are they compatible, but you can't really have one without the other. True anarchism will be capitalism, and true capitalism will be anarchism
Murray N. Rothbard
#8. 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 N. Rothbard
#9. It is clearly absurd to limit the term 'education' to a person's formal schooling.
Murray N. Rothbard
#10. The greatest danger to the State is independent intellectual criticism.
Murray N. Rothbard
#12. Compare the degree of zeal devoted to pursuing the man who assaults a policeman, with the attention that the State pays to the assault of an ordinary citizen.
Murray N. Rothbard
#13. Every once in awhile the human race pauses in the job of botching its affairs and redeems itself by a noble work of the intellect.
Murray N. Rothbard
#14. The number of men sitting at Atlanta and Leavenworth for revolting against the extortions of the government is always ten times as great as the number of government officials condemned for oppressing the taxpayers to their own gain. (Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy, pp.
Murray N. Rothbard
#15. Since production must always precede predation, the free market is anterior to the State. The State has never been created by a "social contract"; it has always been born in conquest and exploitation.
Murray N. Rothbard
#16. In short, and this is a highly important point to grasp, the depression is the "recovery" process, and the end of the depression heralds the return to normal, and to optimum efficiency.
Murray N. Rothbard
#17. It is infinitely better to rely on the pursuit of economic interest by landowners or street companies than to depend on the dubious "altruism" of bureaucrats and government officials.
Murray N. Rothbard
#18. Taxation is theft, purely and simply even though it is theft on a grand and colossal scale which no acknowledged criminals could hope to match. It is a compulsory seizure of the property of the State's inhabitants, or subjects.
Murray N. Rothbard
#21. Libertarianism holds that the only proper role of violence is to defend person and property against violence, that any use of violence that goes beyond such just defense is itself aggressive, unjust, and criminal
Murray N. Rothbard
#22. Many people believe that the free market, despite some admitted advantages, is a picture of disorder and chaos. Nothing is "planned," everything is haphazard. Government dictation, on the other hand, seems simple and orderly; decrees are handed down and they are obeyed.
Murray N. Rothbard
#23. The State provides a legal, orderly, systematic channel for the predation of private property;
Murray N. Rothbard
#24. Any increase in the relative size of government in the economy, therefore, shifts the societal consumption-investment ratio in favor of consumption, and prolongs the depression.
Murray N. Rothbard
#25. The concept of life and perfection is incompatible. BUT so is death and perfection
Murray N. Rothbard
#26. It is easy to be conspicuously 'compassionate' if others are being forced to pay the cost.
Murray N. Rothbard
#27. The General Theory was not truly revolutionary at all but merely old and oft-refuted mercantilist and inflationist fallacies dressed up in shiny new garb, replete with newly constructed and largely incomprehensible jargon.
Murray N. Rothbard
#28. Therefore, the chief task of the rulers is always to secure the active or resigned acceptance of the majority of the citizens.8, 9 Of course, one method of securing support is through the creation of vested economic interests.
Murray N. Rothbard
#29. It is evident that the State needs the intellectuals; it is not so evident why intellectuals need the State.
Murray N. Rothbard
#30. Of all the numerous forms that governments have taken over the centuries, of all the concepts and institutions that have been tried, none has succeeded in keeping the State in check.
Murray N. Rothbard
#31. For this essential acceptance, the majority must be persuaded by ideology that their government is good, wise and, at least, inevitable, and certainly better than other conceivable alternatives. Promoting this ideology among the people is the vital social task of the intellectuals.
Murray N. Rothbard
#32. It is not so evident why intellectuals need the State. Put simply, we may state that the intellectual's livelihood in the free market is never too secure.
Murray N. Rothbard
#33. 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 N. Rothbard
#34. Exchange is the lifeblood, not only of our economy, but of civilization itself.
Murray N. Rothbard
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