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The greatest danger to the State is independent intellectual criticism.

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
Criticism
Independent
Intellectual
Danger
Greatest
State
States

More quotes by Murray Rothbard

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You don't need a treaty to have free trade.
Murray Rothbard
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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
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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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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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The State is a gang of thieves writ large - the most immoral, grasping and unscrupulous individuals in any society.
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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Only the State legally obtains its revenue by coercion.
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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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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All government operation is wasteful, inefficient, and serves the bureaucrat rather than the consumer.
Murray Rothbard
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The state has typically been a device for producing affluence for a few at the expense of many.
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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Governmental subsidy systems promote inefficiency in production and efficiency in coercion and subservience, while penalizing efficiency in production and inefficiency in predation.
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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[Professional politicians] don't mind if price controls cause shortages of health care. In fact, they welcome the prospect, because then they can impose rationing they can impose priorities, and tell everyone how much of what kind of medical care they can have. And besides, ... there's that deeply satisfying rush of power.
Murray Rothbard
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States have always needed intellectuals to con the public into believing that its rule is wise, good, and inevitable
Murray Rothbard
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The State provides a legal, orderly, systematic channel for predation on the property of the producers.
Murray Rothbard
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After the Volcker Fund collapsed, I got another grant from the Lilly Endowment to do a history of the U.S., which I worked on from 1962-66. The original idea was to take the regular facts and put a libertarian assessment on everything.
Murray Rothbard
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Cops must be unleashed, and allowed to administer instant punishment, subject of course to liability when they are in error.
Murray Rothbard
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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