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Murray Rothbard

37 quotes

“Barnes dismissed his own past criticism of the World War II unconditional surrender policy as valid but superficial; for he had learned from General Albert C. Wedemeyer’s book that the murder of Germans and Japanese was the overriding aim of World War II – virtually an Anglo-American scalping party.”
Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) first seen 1968 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 1968
“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 (1926–1995) first seen 1970 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Power and Market: Government and the Economy, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2006, p. 256. First published in 1970
“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 (1926–1995) first seen 1973 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in an interview in Reason magazine (February 1973).
“The natural tendency of the state is inflation.”
Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) first seen 1974 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar (1974).
“I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of any individual. Anarchists oppose the State because it has its very being in such aggression, namely, the expropriation of private property through taxation, the coercive exclusion of other providers of defense service from its territory, and all of the other depredations and coercions that are built upon these twin foci of invasions of individual rights.”
Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) first seen 1975 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Society Without A State" in The Libertarian Forum (1975).
“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 (1926–1995) first seen 1974 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Murray Rothbard, The Anatomy of the State, Auburn, Alabama, Mises Institute (2009) p.11, first published in 1974
“The fundamental political question is why do people obey a government. The answer is that they tend to enslave themselves, to let themselves be governed by tyrants. Freedom from servitude comes not from violent action, but from the refusal to serve. Tyrants fall when the people withdraw their support.”
Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) first seen 1975 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Introduction to Étienne de La Boétie's Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude (1975), p. 39
Also quoted by: Étienne de La Boétie (disputed)
“It is the state that is robbing all classes, rich and poor, black and white alike; it is the state that is ripping us all off; it is the state that is the common enemy of mankind.”
Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) first seen 1977 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: , “The Noblest Cause of All,” Address to the Libertarian Party Convention (1977), Lewrockwell.com
“There is one good thing about Marx: he was not a Keynesian.”
Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) first seen 1990 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Murray N. Rothbard : The Austrian Economics Newsletter" (1990).
“Rights may be universal, but their enforcement must be local.”
Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) first seen 1776 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Two Just Wars: 1776 and 1861 (1994).
“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 (1926–1995) first seen 1970 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Death Wish of the Anarcho-Communists (1970).
“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 (1926–1995) first seen 1995 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Egalitarianism and the Elites (1995).
“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 (1926–1995) first seen 1870 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: from an audio tape of Rothbard's 1986 lecture "Tariffs, Inflation, Anti-Trust and Cartels" [53:47 to 53:55 of 1:47:29], part of the Mises Institute audio lecture series "The American Economy and the End of Laissez-Faire…
“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 (1926–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Cost/Benefit Analysis of the Human Spirit : The Luddites Revisited (15 March 2003).
“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 at all.”
Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Case Against the Fed (5 June 2009).
“So: if the chronic inflation undergone by Americans, and in almost every other country, is caused by the continuing creation of new money, and if in each country its governmental "Central Bank" (in the United States, the Federal Reserve) is the sole monopoly source and creator of all money, who then is responsible for the blight of inflation? Who except the very institution that is solely empowered to create money, that is, the Fed (and the Bank of England, and the Bank of Italy, and other central banks) itself?”
Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The more consistently Austrian School an economist is, the better a writer he will be.”
Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in "An intellectual Autobiography" by Bryan Kaplan, in I Chose Liberty : Autobiographies of Contemporary Libertarians (2010) edited by Walter Block, p. 75.
“The clear and logical thinker will always be an 'extremist', and will therefore always be interesting: his pitafall is to go wildly into error. But on the other hand, while the orthodox 'middle-of-the-road' thinker will never get that far wrong, neither will he ever contribute anything either, aside from being generally deadly dull.”
Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) first seen 1960 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of William Zelermyer's book Invasion of Privacy, published by the Volker Fund (6th October 1960)
“[O]ften, only extremists' make sense, while eclectics and moderates are entangled in contradictions.”
Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) first seen 1960 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Milton Friedman's book, A program for Monetary Stability, published by the Volker Fund (31th October 1960)
“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 (1926–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The libertarian creed, finally, offers the fulfillment of the best of the American past along with the promise of a far better future. Even more than conservatives... 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 (1926–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The cumulative development of a medium of exchange on the free market — is the only way money can become established. … government is powerless to create money for the economy; it can only be developed by the processes of the free market.”
Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Money is a commodity … not a useless token only good for exchanging; … It differs from other commodities in being demanded mainly as a medium of exchange.”
Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It doesn't matter what the supply of money is.”
Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Inflation may be defined as any increase in the economy's supply of money not consisting of an increase in the stock of the money metal.”
Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1926–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Inflation, being a fraudulent invasion of property, could not take place on the free market.”
Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Freedom can run a monetary system as superbly as it runs the rest of the economy. Contrary to many writers, there is nothing special about money that requires extensive governmental dictation.”
Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The problem is that he originated nothing that was true, and that whatever he originated was wrong.”
Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1926–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Shameless sponging on friends and relatives … Marx affected a hatred and contempt for the very material resource he was too anxious to cadge and use so recklessly. Marx created an entire philosophy around his own corrupt attitudes toward money.”
Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In 1756 Edmund Burke published his first work: Vindication of Natural Society. Curiously enough it has been almost completely ignored in the current Burke revival. This work contrasts sharply with Burke’s other writings, for it is hardly in keeping with the current image of the Father of the New Conservatism. A less conservative work could hardly be imagined; in fact, Burke’s Vindication was perhaps the first modern expression of rationalistic and individualistic anarchism. … "Anarchism" is an extreme term, but no other can adequately describe Burke’s thesis. Again and again, he emphatically denounces any and all government, and not just specific forms of government. … All government, Burke adds, is founded on one "grand error." It was observed that men sometimes commit violence against one another, and that it is therefore necessary to guard against such violence. As a result, men appoint governors among them. But who is to defend the people against the governors? … The anarchism of Burke’s Vindication is negative, rather than positive. It consists of an attack on the State rather than a positive blueprint of the type of society which Burke would regard as ideal. Consequently, both the communist and the individualist wings of anarchism have drawn sustenance from this work.”
Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) first seen 1958 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Edmund Burke, Anarchist", first published as "A Note on Burke’s Vindication of Natural Society" in the Journal of the History of Ideas, 19, 1 (January 1958), p. 114.
“If ‘we are the government,’ then anything a government does to an individual is not only just and untyrannical; it is also ‘voluntary’ on the part of the individual concerned… if the government conscripts a man, or throws him into jail for dissident opinion, then he is ‘doing it to himself’ and therefore nothing untoward has occurred. Under this reasoning, any Jews murdered by the Nazi government were not murdered, instead, they must have ‘committed suicide,’ since they were the government (which was democratically chosen), and therefore anything the government did to them was voluntary on their part… the overwhelming bulk of the people hold this fallacy to a greater or less degree.”
Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) first seen 1965 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in “The Anatomy of the State”, Rampart Journal, Vol. 1, No. 2 (summer 1965), reprinted in the Libertarian Alternative, Tibor R. Machan, ed., Chicago: IL, Nelson-Hall (1977) p. 69-70
“Money is different from all other commodities: other things being equal, more shoes, or more discoveries of oil or copper benefit society, since they help alleviate natural scarcity. But once a commodity is established as a money on the market, no more money at all is needed. Since the only use of money is for exchange and reckoning, more dollars or pounds or marks in circulation cannot confer a social benefit: they will simply dilute the exchange value of every existing dollar or pound or mark. So it is a great boon that gold or silver are scarce and are costly to increase in supply. But 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 (1926–1995) first seen 1995 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Taking Money Back", in The Freeman (September - October 1995).
“All my life, it seems, I have hated the guts of Max Lerner. Now, make no mistake: there is nothing personal in this rancor. I have never met, nor have I ever had any personal dealings with, Max. No, my absolute loathing for Max Lerner is disinterested, cosmic in its grandeur. It's just that ever since I was a toddler, this ugly homunculus, this pretentious jackass, has been there, towering over the American ideological scene. In the fifty-five years that I have been aware of Max's presence, in all of his many permutations and combinations and seeming twists and turns, he has taken the totally repellent position at every step of the way.”
Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: I Hate Max Lerner" (2005).
“A parent does not have the right to aggress against his children, but also that the parent should not have a legal obligation to feed, clothe, or educate his children, since such obligations would entail positive acts coerced upon the parent and depriving the parent of his rights. The parent therefore may not murder or mutilate his child, and the law properly outlaws a parent from doing so. But the parent should have the legal right not to feed the child, i.e., to allow it to die. The law, therefore, may not properly compel the parent to feed a child or to keep it alive. (Again, whether or not a parent has a moral rather than a legally enforceable obligation to keep his child alive is a completely separate question.) This rule allows us to solve such vexing questions as: should a parent have the right to allow a deformed baby to die (e.g., by not feeding it)? The answer is of course yes, following a fortiori from the larger right to allow any baby, whether deformed or not, to die. (Though, as we shall see below, in a libertarian society the existence of a free baby market will bring such "neglect" down to a minimum.)”
Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One gratifying aspect of our rise to some prominence is that, for the first time in my memory, we, "our side," had captured a crucial word from the enemy. Other words, such as "liberal," had been originally identified with laissez-faire libertarians, but had been captured by left-wing statists, forcing us in the 1940s to call ourselves father feebly "true" or "classical" liberals. "Libertarians"’, in contrast, had long been simply a polite word for left-wing anarchists, that is for anti-private property anarchists, either of the communist or syndicalist variety. But now we had taken it over, and more properly from the view of etymology; since we were proponents of individual liberty and therefore of the individual's right to his property. , p. 83”
Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source