Quotes by Murray Rothbard

“It is the state that is robbing all classes, rich and poor, black and white alike; it is the state that is ripping us all off; it is the state that is the common enemy of mankind.”

“There is one good thing about Marx: he was not a Keynesian.”

“Rights may be universal, but their enforcement must be local.”

“It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a 'dismal science.' But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud ...”

“Money is different from all other commodities: other things being equal, more shoes, or more discoveries of oil or copper benefit society, since they help alleviate natural scarcity. But once a com...”

“Behind the honeyed but patently absurd pleas for equality is a ruthless drive for placing themselves (the elites) at the top of a new hierarchy of power.”

“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.”

“Harold, the young kids out there are not going to be willing to go to the barricades in defense of lowered transaction costs.”

“All my life, it seems, I have hated the guts of Max Lerner. Now, make no mistake: there is nothing personal in this rancor. I have never met, nor have I ever had any personal dealings with, Max. No...”

“In short, the early receivers of the new money in this market chain of events gain at the expense of those who receive the money toward the end of the chain, and still worse losers are the people (...”

“So: if the chronic inflation undergone by Americans, and in almost every other country, is caused by the continuing creation of new money, and if in each country its governmental Central Bank (in t...”

“The more consistently Austrian School an economist is, the better a writer he will be.”

“The clear and logical thinker will always be an 'extremist', and will therefore always be interesting: his pitafall is to go wildly into error. But on the other hand, while the orthodox 'middle-of-...”

“[O]ften, only extremists' make sense, while eclectics and moderates are entangled in contradictions.”

“If a man has the right to self-ownership, to the control of his life, then in the real world he must also have the right to sustain his life by grappling with and transforming resources; he must be...”

“The libertarian creed, finally, offers the fulfillment of the best of the American past along with the promise of a far better future. Even more than conservatives... libertarians are squarely in t...”

“The cumulative development of a medium of exchange on the free market — is the only way money can become established. … government is powerless to create money for the economy; it can only be devel...”

“Money is a commodity … not a useless token only good for exchanging; … It differs from other commodities in being demanded mainly as a medium of exchange.”

“It doesn't matter what the supply of money is.”

“Inflation may be defined as any increase in the economy's supply of money not consisting of an increase in the stock of the money metal.”