The Best Murray Rothbard quotes

To be moral, an act must be free. — Murray N. Rothbard

You don’t need a treaty to have free trade. — Murray Rothbard

Inflation, being a fraudulent invasion of property, could not take place on the free market. — Murray Rothbard

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

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

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 picture of the free market is necessarily one of harmony and mutual benefit; the picture of State intervention is one of caste conflict, coercion, and exploitation. — 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

If a man’s free will to adopt ideas and values is inalienable, his freedom of action–his freedom to put these ideas into effect in the world–is not in such a fortunate condition. — 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

Commercial banks–that is, fractional reserve banks–create money out of thin air. Essentially, they do it in the same way as counterfeiters. — Murray Rothbard

There is no need for government to intervene in money and prices because of changing population or for any other reason. The ‘problem’ of the proper supply of money is not a problem at all. — Murray Rothbard

Never have the world’s moneys been so long cut off from their metallic roots. — 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

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

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

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

Capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism. — Murray Rothbard

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

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

Ultimately, there is no entity called ‘government’; there are only people forming themselves into groups called ‘governments’ and acting in a ‘governmental’ manner. — 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

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

The concept of life and perfection is incompatible. BUT so is death and perfection — Murray Rothbard

Government is a gang of thieves writ large. — Murray Rothbard

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

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

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

Nature is simply the environment on earth in which man finds himself, and to treat it as a separate being in the image of man is sheer nonsense. — 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

Exchange is the lifeblood, not only of our economy, but of civilization itself. — Murray N. Rothbard

The State is a gang of thieves writ large–the most immoral, grasping and unscrupulous individuals in any society. — Murray Rothbard

Philosophically, I believe that libertarianism–and the wider creed of sound individualism of which libertarianism is a part–must rest on absolutism and deny relativism. — Murray Rothbard

The majority is not society, is not everyone. Majority coercion over the minority is still coercion. — 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

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

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