110+ Murray Rothbard Quotes On State, Libertarian And Anarchist

Murray Rothbard was an American economist, historian, and political theorist of the Austrian School. He was a prolific author and a senior fellow at the Mises Institute, a libertarian think tank. Rothbard was an advocate of laissez-faire economics and a vocal critic of the Federal Reserve and central banking. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Murray Rothbard on state, libertarian, anarchist.

Top 10 Murray Rothbard Quotes

1. 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.
2. The State is a gang of thieves writ large - the most immoral, grasping and unscrupulous individuals in any society.
3. 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.
4. You don't need a treaty to have free trade.
5. Capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism.
6. 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.
7. Remember that the minimum wage law provides no jobs; it only outlaws them; and outlawed jobs are the inevitable result.
8. The best way to help the poor is to slash taxes and allow savings, investment, and creation of jobs to proceed unhampered.
9. If you wish to know how libertarians regard the State and any of its acts, simply think of the State as a criminal band, and all of the libertarian attitudes will logically fall into place.
10. Governmental subsidy systems promote inefficiency in production and efficiency in coercion and subservience, while penalizing efficiency in production and inefficiency in predation.

Murray Rothbard Short Quotes

• Inflation, being a fraudulent invasion of property, could not take place on the free market.
• Never have the world's moneys been so long cut off from their metallic roots.
• Government is a gang of thieves writ large.
• Rights might be universal but their enforcement must be local.
• All government wars are unjust.
• The natural tendency of the state is inflation.
• The more consistently Austrian School an economist is, the better a writer he will be.
• The concept of life and perfection is incompatible. BUT so is death and perfection
• Monetary expansion is a massive scheme of hidden redistribution.
• The fundamental axiom, then, for the study of man is the existence of individual consciousness

Murray Rothbard Quotes About State

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

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

Just as no one is morally required to answer a robber truthfully when he asks if there are any valuables in one’s house, so no one can be morally required to answer truthfully similar questions asked by the State, e.g., when filling out income tax returns. — Murray Rothbard

The state has typically been a device for producing affluence for a few at the expense of many. — Murray Rothbard

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

Libertarians regard the state as the Supreme, the eternal, the best organized aggressor against the persons and property of the mass of the public. All states everywhere, whether democratic, dictatorial, or monarchical, whether red, white, blue or brown. — Murray Rothbard

Since the State necessarily lives by the compulsory confiscation of private capital, and since its expansion necessarily involves ever-greater incursions on private individuals and private enterprise, we must assert that the state is profoundly and inherently anti-capitalist . — Murray Rothbard

Gorbachev's stance contrasts admirably with the policy of the sainted Abraham Lincoln, who used massive force and mass murder to force the seceding Southern states to remain in the Union. — Murray Rothbard

This, by the way, is the welfare state in action: Its a whole bunch of special interest groups screwing consumers and taxpayers, and making them think they're really benefiting. — Murray Rothbard

Only the State legally obtains its revenue by coercion. — Murray Rothbard

Murray Rothbard Quotes About Libertarian

The libertarian must never advocate or prefer a gradual, as opposed to an immediate and rapid, approach to his goal. For by doing so, he undercuts the overriding importance of his own goals and principles. And if he himself values his own goals so lightly, how highly will others value them. — Murray Rothbard

What...can the government do to help the poor? The only answer is the libertarian answer: Get out of the way. — Murray Rothbard

Who wants good people in government? Good people should be in the private sector. Helping us out, helping themselves out in the private sector. We want schmoes in government. We want people who can't find the doorknob. Why waste productive people, as well as looting the taxpayer? — Murray Rothbard

It is not the business of the law to make anyone good or reverent or moral or clean or upright. — Murray Rothbard

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

The freedom to speak is meaningless without the corollary freedom to keep silent. — Murray Rothbard

After the Volcker Fund collapsed, I got another grant from the Lilly Endowment to do a history of the U.S., which I worked on from 1962-66. The original idea was to take the regular facts and put a libertarian assessment on everything. — Murray Rothbard

Murray Rothbard Quotes About Society

I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of any individual. — Murray Rothbard

Unlike every other person and institution in society, government obtains its revenue from coercion, from taxation. — Murray Rothbard

If we look at the black record of mass murder, exploitation, and tyranny levied on society by governments over the ages, we need not be loath to abandon the Leviathan State and . . . try freedom. — Murray Rothbard

Money ... is the nerve center of the economic system. If, therefore, the state is able to gain unquestioned control over the unit of all accounts, the state will then be in a position to dominate the entire economic system, and the whole society. — Murray Rothbard

Murray Rothbard Famous Quotes And Sayings

Having examined the nature of fractional reserve and of central banking, and having seen how the questionable blessings of Central Banking were fastened upon America, it is time to see precisely how the Fed, as presently constituted, carries out its systemic inflation and its control of the American monetary system. — Murray Rothbard

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

Minimum wage laws tragically generate unemployment, especially so among the poorest and least skilled or educated workers... Because a minimum wage, of course, does not guarantee any worker's employment; it only prohibits, by force of law, anyone from being hired at the wage which would pay his employer to hire him. — Murray Rothbard

[Professional politicians] don't mind if price controls cause shortages of health care. In fact, they welcome the prospect, because then they can impose rationing; they can impose priorities, and tell everyone how much of what kind of medical care they can have. And besides, ... there's that deeply satisfying rush of power. — Murray Rothbard

If a man has the right to self-ownership, to the control of his life, then in the real world he must also have the right to sustain his life by grappling with and transforming resources; he must be able to own the ground and the resources on which he stands and which he must use. In short, to sustain his human right. — Murray Rothbard

Behind the honeyed but patently absurd pleas for equality is a ruthless drive for placing themselves (the elites) at the top of a new hierarchy of power. — Murray Rothbard

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

Monetary inflation not only raises prices and destroys the value of the currency unit; it also acts as a giant system of expropriation. — Murray Rothbard

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 Rothbard

Soaking the rich would not only be profoundly immoral, it would drastically penalize the very virtues: thrift, business foresight, and investment, that have brought about our remarkable standard of living. It would truly be killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. — Murray Rothbard

Instead of a bumbling and inefficient tool of society, the radical [libertarian] sees the State itself, in its very nature, as coercive, exploitative, parasitic, and hence profoundly antisocial. The State is, and always has been, the great single enemy of the human race, its liberty, happiness, and progress. — Murray Rothbard

Harold, the young kids out there are not going to be willing to go to the barricades in defense of lowered transaction costs. — Murray Rothbard

Pollution and overuse of resources stem directly from the failure of government to defend private property. If property rights were to be defended adequately, we would find that here, as in other areas of our economy and society, private enterprise and modern technology would come not as a curse to mankind but as its salvation. — Murray Rothbard

Cops must be unleashed, and allowed to administer instant punishment, subject of course to liability when they are in error. — Murray Rothbard

I see a great future for gold and silver coins as the currency people may increasingly turn to when paper currencies begin to disintegrate. — Murray Rothbard

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

Gold was not selected arbitrarily by governments to be the monetary standard. Gold had developed for many centuries on the free market as the best money; as the commodity providing the most stable and desirable monetary medium. — Murray Rothbard

In short, the early receivers of the new money in this market chain of events gain at the expense of those who receive the money toward the end of the chain, and still worse losers are the people (e.g., those on fixed incomes such as annuities, interest, or pensions) who never receive the new money. — Murray Rothbard

While big-business leaders and firms can be highly productive, servants of consumers in a free market economy, they are also all too often, seekers after subsidies, contracts, privileges, or cartels furnished by big government. Often, business lobbyists and leaders are the sparkplugs for the statist, interventionist system. — Murray Rothbard

On the free market, everyone earns according to his productive value in satisfying consumer desires. Under statist distribution, everyone earns in proportion to the amount he can plunder from the producers. — Murray Rothbard

There can be no truly moral choice unless that choice is made in freedom; similarly, there can be no really firmly grounded and consistent defense of freedom unless that defense is rooted in moral principle. — Murray Rothbard

Positivism eliminates any kind of natural law principle - for example, that there are economic laws which can be transgressed only at your peril. With positivism, there is a tendency to leap into ad hoc economic theory. — Murray Rothbard

All interstate wars intensify aggression – maximize it … some wars are even more unjust than others. In other words, all government wars are unjust, although some governments have less unjust claims. — Murray Rothbard

Unlike the days of the gold standard, it is impossible for the Federal Reserve to go bankrupt; it holds the legal monopoly of counterfeiting (of creating money out of thin air) in the entire country. — Murray Rothbard

Absolute freedom need not be lost as the price we must pay for the advent of civilization; men are born free, and need never be in chains. Man may achieve liberty and abundance, freedom and civilization. — Murray Rothbard

...The very nature of interstate war puts innocent civilians into great jeopardy, especially with modern technology. — Murray Rothbard

Essentially, I mean the almost self-evident fact that individuals, ethnic groups, and races differ among themselves in intelligence and in many other traits, and that intelligence, as well as less controversial traits of temperament, are in large part hereditary. — Murray Rothbard

Subjectivism is not an absolute principle; it is a necessary but not sufficient condition for sound methodology. — Murray Rothbard

It is particularly odd that economists who profess to be champions of a free-market economy, should go to such twists and turns to avoid facing the plain fact: that gold, that scarce and valuable market-produced metal, has always been, and will continue to be, by far the best money for human society. — Murray Rothbard

Since 1933, New Deal farm policy has continued and expanded, pursuing its grisly logic at the expense of the nation's consumers, year in and year out, in Democrat or Republican regimes, in good times and in bad. — Murray Rothbard

To those advocates of independent paper moneys who also champion the free market, I would address this simple question: "Why don't you advocate the unlimited freedom of each individual to manufacture dollars?" If dollars are really and properly things-in-themselves, why not let everyone manufacture them as they manufacture wheat and baby food? — Murray Rothbard

The ingenious slogan that the public debt does not matter because 'we owe it to ourselves' is clearly absurd. — Murray Rothbard

Placing the state in charge of moral principles is equivalent to putting the proverbial fox in charge of the chicken coop. — Murray Rothbard

Liberty and morality had to win their way slowly over many centuries, until finally expanding liberty made possible the great technological advance of the Industrial Revolution and the flowering of modern capitalism. — Murray Rothbard

I see the liberty of the individual not only as a great moral good in itself (or, with Lord Acton, as the highest political good), but also as the necessary condition for the flowering of all the other goods that mankind cherishes: moral virtue, civilization, the arts and sciences, economic prosperity. — Murray Rothbard

If we look around, then, at the crucial problem areas of our society - the areas of crisis and failure - we find in each and every case a “red thread” marking and uniting them all: the thread of government. In every one of these cases, government either has totally run or heavily influenced the activity. — Murray Rothbard

Governments have persistently tried their best to promote, encourage, and expand the circulation of bank and government paper, and to discourage the people's use of gold itself. — Murray Rothbard

An Atlas, whose back is bowed and whose hands are busy holding up the world, has no arms to lift to deal with his own defense. Increase his burdens and you will crush him...This is our present posture...This suggestions I make...would...conserve American lives for American ends. — Murray Rothbard

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

Scratch an egalitarian, and you will inevitably find a statist. — Murray Rothbard

All government operation is wasteful, inefficient, and serves the bureaucrat rather than the consumer. — Murray Rothbard

I want to make it clear what I am not saying. I am not saying that fiat money, once established on the ruins of gold, cannot then continue indefinitely on its own. — Murray Rothbard

Children are prepared for democracy by being led to discuss current events without first learning the systematic subjects (politics, economics, history) which are necessary in order to discuss them. The Mole effect is to substitute slogans and superficial opinion for considered individual thought. And the opinion is that of the lowest common denominator of the group. — Murray Rothbard

There is one good thing about Marx: he was not a Keynesian. — Murray Rothbard

The State provides a legal, orderly, systematic channel for predation on the property of the producers. — Murray Rothbard

It would be an instructive exercise for the skeptical reader to try to frame a definition of taxation which does not also include theft. Like the robber, the State demands money at the equivalent of gunpoint; if the taxpayer refuses to pay, his assets are seized by force, and if he should resist such depredation, he will be arrested or shot if he should continue to resist. — Murray Rothbard

Kissinger's major, and most lucrative role, has come as head of Kissinger Associates in New York City, founded on a loan obtained in 1982 from the international banking firm of E.M. Warburg, Pincus and Company. Nominally, Kissinger Associates (KA) is an "international consulting firm" but "consultant" covers many sins, and in KA's case, this means international political influence-peddling for its two dozen or so important corporate clients. — Murray Rothbard

Free-market capitalism is a network of free and voluntary exchanges in which producers work, produce, and exchange their products for the products of others through prices voluntarily arrived at. — Murray Rothbard

Falling prices through increased production is a wonderful long-run tendency of untrammeled capitalism. — Murray Rothbard

The necessary consequence of an egalitarian program is the decidedly inegalitarian creation of a ruthless power elite. — Murray Rothbard

It is clearly absurd to limit the term 'education' to a person's formal schooling. — Murray Rothbard

John Stuart was the quintessence of soft rather than hardcore, a woolly minded man of mush in striking contrast to his steel-edged father. — Murray Rothbard

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

One of the most important features of our economic resources is their scarcity: land, labor, and capital goods factors are all scarce, and may all be put to various possible uses. The free market uses them 'productively' because the producers are guided, on the market, to produce what the consumers most need: automobiles, for example, rather than buggies. — Murray Rothbard

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

At the base of the Fed pyramid, and therefore of the bank system's creation of "money" in the sense of deposits, is the Fed's power to print legal tender money. But the Fed tries its best not to print cash but rather to "print" or create demand deposits, checking deposits, out of thin air, since its demand deposits constitute the reserves on top of which the commercial banks can pyramid a multiple creation of bank deposits, or "checkbook money." — Murray Rothbard

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

No one may threaten or commit violence ('aggress') against another man's person or property. Violence may be employed only against the man who commits such violence; that is, only defensively against the aggressive violence of another. In short, no violence may be employed against a non-aggressor. Here is the fundamental rule from which can be deduced the entire corpus of libertarian theory. — Murray Rothbard

The natural tendency of the state is inflation. This statement will shock those accustomed to viewing the state as a committee of the whole nation ardently dispensing the general welfare, but I think it nonetheless true. — Murray Rothbard

All of the services commonly thought to require the State-from the coining of money to police protection to the development of law in defense of the rights of person and property-can be and have been supplied far more efficiently and certainly more morally by private persons. The State is in no sense required by the nature of man; quite the contrary. — Murray Rothbard

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

The more these readjustments are delayed ... the longer the depression will have to last, and the longer complete recovery is postponed. — Murray Rothbard

True #‎ anarchism will be #‎ capitalism , and true capitalism will be anarchism. — Murray Rothbard

I see no other conceivable strategy for the achievement of liberty than political action. Religious or philosophical conversion of each man and woman is simply not going to work; that strategy ignores the problem of power, the fact that millions of people have a vested interest in statism and are not likely to give it up.... Education in liberty is of course vital, but it is not enough; action must also be taken to roll back the State. — Murray Rothbard

The individual man, in introspecting the fact of his own consciousness, also discovers the primordial natural fact of his freedom: his freedom to choose, his freedom to use or not use his reason about any given subject. In short, the natural fact of his "free will." He also discovers the natural fact of his mind's command over his body and its actions: that is, of his natural ownership over his self. — Murray Rothbard

If government manages to establish paper tickets or bank credit as money, as equivalent to gold grams or ounces, then the government, as dominant money-supplier, becomes free to create money costlessly and at will. As a result, this 'inflation' of the money supply destroys the value of the dollar or pound, drives up prices, cripples economic calculation, and hobbles and seriously damages the workings of the market economy. — Murray Rothbard

The State thrives on war - unless, of course, it is defeated and crushed - expands on it, glories in it. — Murray Rothbard

The libertarian creed...offers the fulfillment of the best of the American past along with the promise of a far better future. Libertarians are squarely in the great classical liberal tradition that built the United States and bestowed on us the American heritage of individual liberty, a peaceful foreign policy, minimal government, and a free-market economy. — Murray Rothbard

The costs of government are bound to be much higher than those of the free market. . .The State cannot calculate well and therefore cannot gauge its costs accurately. — Murray Rothbard

The greatest danger to the State is independent intellectual criticism. — Murray Rothbard

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

Life Lessons by Murray Rothbard

1. Murray Rothbard taught us the importance of being self-reliant and taking responsibility for our own lives. He argued that individuals should be free to pursue their own interests and ambitions without interference from the government or any other outside forces.
2. He also highlighted the importance of understanding the consequences of our actions, and how our decisions can have a lasting impact on our lives and the lives of those around us.
3. Lastly, Rothbard showed us the power of knowledge, and how having a deep understanding of economics and politics can help us make better decisions and create a more prosperous society.