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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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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
Thieves
Immoral
Individuals
Large
State
Unscrupulous
Society
Writ
Individual
Grasping
States
Gang

More quotes by Murray Rothbard

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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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It is particularly odd that economists who profess to be champions of a free-market economy, should go to such twists and turns to avoid facing the plain fact: that gold, that scarce and valuable market-produced metal, has always been, and will continue to be, by far the best money for human society.
Murray Rothbard
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We libertarians are not the spokesmen for any ethnic or economic class we are the spokesmen for all classes, for all of the public we strive to see all of these groups united, hand-in-hand, in opposition to the plundering and privileged minority that constitutes the rulers of the State.
Murray Rothbard
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The greatest danger to the State is independent intellectual criticism.
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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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
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All government operation is wasteful, inefficient, and serves the bureaucrat rather than the consumer.
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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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
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Monetary inflation not only raises prices and destroys the value of the currency unit it also acts as a giant system of expropriation.
Murray Rothbard
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The more these readjustments are delayed ... the longer the depression will have to last, and the longer complete recovery is postponed.
Murray Rothbard
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Minimum wage laws tragically generate unemployment, especially so among the poorest and least skilled or educated workers... Because a minimum wage, of course, does not guarantee any worker's employment it only prohibits, by force of law, anyone from being hired at the wage which would pay his employer to hire him.
Murray Rothbard
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The natural tendency of the state is inflation.
Murray Rothbard
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Only the State legally obtains its revenue by coercion.
Murray Rothbard
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The State is, and always has been, the great single enemy of the human race, its liberty, happiness, and progress.
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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I see a great future for gold and silver coins as the currency people may increasingly turn to when paper currencies begin to disintegrate.
Murray Rothbard
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To those advocates of independent paper moneys who also champion the free market, I would address this simple question: Why don't you advocate the unlimited freedom of each individual to manufacture dollars? If dollars are really and properly things-in-themselves, why not let everyone manufacture them as they manufacture wheat and baby food?
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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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