Murray Rothbard quotes - page 3

No action can be virtuous unless it is freely chosen. (Murray Rothbard)
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. View quote
Murray Rothbard
All interstate wars intensify aggression – maximize it. View quote
Murray Rothbard
A less conservative work could hardly be imagined; in fact, Burke's Vindication was perhaps the first modern expression of rationalistic and individualistic anarchism. View quote
Murray Rothbard
Consequently, both the communist and the individualist wings of anarchism have drawn sustenance from this work. View quote
Murray Rothbard
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. View quote
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. 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. View quote
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.' View quote
Murray Rothbard
States have always needed intellectuals to con the public into believing that its rule is wise, good, and inevitable. View quote
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. View quote
Murray Rothbard
You don't need a treaty to have free trade. (Murray Rothbard)
Capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism. View quote
Murray Rothbard
The best way to help the poor is to slash taxes and allow savings, investment, and creation of jobs to proceed unhampered. View quote
Murray Rothbard
Monetary expansion is a massive scheme of hidden redistribution. View quote
Murray Rothbard
It is not the business of the law to make anyone good or reverent or moral or clean or upright. View quote
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. View quote
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 . View quote
Murray Rothbard
The greatest danger to the State is independent intellectual criticism. View quote
Murray Rothbard
Unlike every other person and institution in society, government obtains its revenue from coercion, from taxation. View quote
Murray Rothbard
What...can the government do to help the poor? The only answer is the libertarian answer: Get out of the way. View quote
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)
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. View quote
Murray Rothbard
The fundamental axiom, then, for the study of man is the existence of individual consciousness. View quote
Murray Rothbard
The ingenious slogan that the public debt does not matter because 'we owe it to ourselves' is clearly absurd. View quote
Murray Rothbard
Government is a gang of thieves writ large. View quote
Murray Rothbard