Murray Rothbard Quotes

50 Sourced Quotes

The more these readjustments are delayed... the longer the depression will have to last, and the longer complete recovery is postponed.

Murray Rothbard
Never have the world's moneys been so long cut off from their metallic roots.

Murray Rothbard
There is one good thing about Marx: he was not a Keynesian.

Murray Rothbard
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, my absolute loathing for Max Lerner is disinterested, cosmic in its grandeur. It's just that ever since I was a toddler, this ugly homunculus, this pretentious jackass, has been there, towering over the American ideological scene. In the fifty-five years that I have been aware of Max's presence, in all of his many permutations and combinations and seeming twists and turns, he has taken the totally repellent position at every step of the way.

Murray Rothbard
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
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 developed by the processes of the free market.

Murray Rothbard
The individual man, in introspecting the fact of his own consciousness, also discovers the primordial natural fact of his freedom: his freedom to choose, his freedom to use or not use his reason about any given subject. In short, the natural fact of his "free will." He also discovers the natural fact of his mind's command over his body and its actions: that is, of his natural ownership over his self.

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

Murray Rothbard
The great non sequitur committed by defenders of the State, is to leap from the necessity of society to the necessity of the State.

Murray Rothbard
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.

Murray Rothbard
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
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 (e. g., those on fixed incomes such as annuities, interest, or pensions) who never receive the new money at all.

Murray Rothbard
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
Shameless sponging on friends and relatives … Marx affected a hatred and contempt for the very material resource he was too anxious to cadge and use so recklessly. Marx created an entire philosophy around his own corrupt attitudes toward money.

Murray Rothbard
Just as no one is morally required to answer a robber truthfully when he asks if there are any valuables in one's house, so no one can be morally required to answer truthfully similar questions asked by the State, e.g., when filling out income tax returns.

Murray Rothbard
The problem is that he originated nothing that was true, and that whatever he originated was wrong.

Murray Rothbard
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 and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.

Murray Rothbard
Inflation, being a fraudulent invasion of property, could not take place on the free market.

Murray Rothbard
Rights may be universal, but their enforcement must be local.

Murray Rothbard
John Stuart was the quintessence of soft rather than hardcore, a woolly minded man of mush in striking contrast to his steel-edged father.

Murray Rothbard