Author

It is in war that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society.

From Murray Rothbard

While deficits are often inflationary and always pernicious, curing them by raising taxes is equivalent to curing an illness by shooting the patient.

From Murray Rothbard

The avoidance of explicit ethical judgments leads political scientists to one overriding implicit value judgment - that in favor of the political status quo as it happens to prevail in any given society.

From Murray Rothbard

The very essence of political philosophy is the carving out of an ethical system - strictly, a subset of ethics dealing with political ethics. Ethics is the one rational discipline that demands the establishment of a rational set of value judgments; political ethics is that subset applying to matters of State.

From Murray Rothbard

The State provides a legal, orderly, systematic channel for the predation of private property; it renders certain, secure, and relatively 'peaceful' the lifeline of the parasitic caste in society.

From 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 anticapitalist.

From Murray Rothbard

Now judicial review, beloved by conservatives, can, of course, fulfill the excellent function of declaring government interventions and tyrannies unconstitutional. But it can also validate and legitimize the government in the eyes of the people by declaring these actions valid and constitutional.

From Murray Rothbard

Philosophically, I believe that libertarianism - and the wider creed of sound individualism of which libertarianism is a part - must rest on absolutism and deny relativism.

From Murray Rothbard

The Keynesian prescription for unemployment rests on the persistence of a 'money illusion' among workers, i.e., on the belief that while, through unions and government, they will keep money wage rates from falling, they will also accept a fall in real wage rates via higher prices.

From Murray Rothbard

In order to continue in office, any government (not simply a 'democratic' government) must have the support of the majority of its subjects. This support, it must be noted, need not be active enthusiasm; it may well be passive resignation as if to an inevitable law of nature.

From Murray Rothbard

Murray Rothbard

Notable Quotes

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