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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

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Murray Rothbard
Age: 68 †
Born: 1926
Born: March 2
Died: 1995
Died: January 7
Activist
Economist
Essayist
Historian
Philosopher
Professor
University Teacher
Writer
The Bronx
New York City
Murray Newton Rothbard
Murray N. Rothbard
Area
Voluntary
Society
Maintain
Coercion
Force
Contribution
Payment
Use
Areas
Attempts
Given
Organization
Revenue
Obtains
States
Violence
Monopoly
Territorial
Particular
Anarchy
Briefly
Services
Rendered
State

More quotes by Murray Rothbard

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All government operation is wasteful, inefficient, and serves the bureaucrat rather than the consumer.
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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
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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
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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
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Only the State legally obtains its revenue by coercion.
Murray Rothbard
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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
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The concept of life and perfection is incompatible. BUT so is death and perfection
Murray Rothbard
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The necessary consequence of an egalitarian program is the decidedly inegalitarian creation of a ruthless power elite.
Murray Rothbard
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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
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The natural tendency of the state is inflation.
Murray Rothbard
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Capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism.
Murray Rothbard
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Never have the world's moneys been so long cut off from their metallic roots.
Murray Rothbard
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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
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Scratch an egalitarian, and you will inevitably find a statist.
Murray Rothbard