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

More quotes by Murray Rothbard

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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 .
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
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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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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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Gold was not selected arbitrarily by governments to be the monetary standard. Gold had developed for many centuries on the free market as the best money as the commodity providing the most stable and desirable monetary medium.
Murray Rothbard
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Having examined the nature of fractional reserve and of central banking, and having seen how the questionable blessings of Central Banking were fastened upon America, it is time to see precisely how the Fed, as presently constituted, carries out its systemic inflation and its control of the American monetary system.
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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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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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The necessary consequence of an egalitarian program is the decidedly inegalitarian creation of a ruthless power elite.
Murray Rothbard
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Monetary expansion is a massive scheme of hidden redistribution.
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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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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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 natural tendency of the state is inflation.
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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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.
Murray Rothbard
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Subjectivism is not an absolute principle it is a necessary but not sufficient condition for sound methodology.
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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Never have the world's moneys been so long cut off from their metallic roots.
Murray Rothbard
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The concept of life and perfection is incompatible. BUT so is death and perfection
Murray Rothbard