65 Quotes by Murray N. Rothbard

  • Author Murray N. Rothbard
  • Quote

    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.” For the masses of men do not create their own ideas, or indeed think through these ideas independently; they follow passively the ideas adopted and disseminated by the body of intellectuals.

  • Share

  • Author Murray N. Rothbard
  • Quote

    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.

  • Share


  • Author Murray N. Rothbard
  • Quote

    We conclude, therefore, that determining the supply of money, like all other goods, is best left to the free market. Aside from the general moral and economic advantages of freedom over coercion, no dictated quantity of money will do the work better, and the free market will set the production of gold in accordance with its relative ability to satisfy the needs of consumers, as compared with all other productive goods.10.

  • Share

  • Author Murray N. Rothbard
  • Quote

    For centuries the State has committed mass murder and called it “war”; then ennobled the mass slaughter that “war” involves. For centuries the State has enslaved people into its armed battalions and called it “conscription” in the “national service.” For centuries the State has robbed people at bayonet point and called it “taxation.

  • Share

  • Author Murray N. Rothbard
  • Quote

    Whenever someone starts talking about ‘fair competition’ or indeed, about ‘fairness’ in general, it is time to keep a sharp eye on your wallet, for it is about to be picked.

  • Share

  • Author Murray N. Rothbard
  • Quote

    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.

  • Share

  • Author Murray N. Rothbard
  • Quote

    Exchange is the lifeblood, not only of our economy, but of civilization itself.

  • Share

  • Author Murray N. Rothbard
  • Quote

    Man has rights because they are natural rights. They are grounded in the nature of man: the individual’s capacity for conscious choice, the necessity for him to use his mind and energy to adopt goals and values, to find out about the world, to pursue his ends in order to survive and prosper, his capacity and need to communicate and interact with other human beings and to participate in the division of labor.

  • Share