Murray N. Rothbard: Quotes about people

Murray N. Rothbard was American economist of the Austrian School, libertarian political theorist, and historian. Explore interesting quotes on people.
Murray N. Rothbard: 86 quotes15 likes

“It is curious that people tend to regard government as a quasi-divine, selfless, Santa Claus organization. Government was constructed neither for ability nor for the exercise of loving care; government was built for the use of force and for necessarily demagogic appeals for votes. If individuals do not know their own interests in many cases, they are free to turn to private experts for guidance. It is absurd to say that they will be served better by a coercive, demagogic apparatus.”

Murray N. Rothbard book Power and Market

Power and Market: Government and the Economy, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2006, p. 256. First published in 1970

“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 N. Rothbard

The Case Against the Fed (5 June 2009) http://mises.org/daily/3480.

“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 N. Rothbard

The Death Wish of the Anarcho-Communists (1970) http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard122.html.

“If ‘we are the government,’ then anything a government does to an individual is not only just and untyrannical; it is also ‘voluntary’ on the part of the individual concerned… if the government conscripts a man, or throws him into jail for dissident opinion, then he is ‘doing it to himself’ and therefore nothing untoward has occurred. Under this reasoning, any Jews murdered by the Nazi government were not murdered, instead, they must have ‘committed suicide,’ since they were the government (which was democratically chosen), and therefore anything the government did to them was voluntary on their part… the overwhelming bulk of the people hold this fallacy to a greater or less degree.”

Murray N. Rothbard

As quoted in “The Anatomy of the State”, Rampart Journal, Vol. 1, No. 2 (summer 1965), reprinted in the Libertarian Alternative, Tibor R. Machan, ed., Chicago: IL, Nelson-Hall (1977) p. 69-70

“The fundamental political question is why do people obey a government. The answer is that they tend to enslave themselves, to let themselves be governed by tyrants. Freedom from servitude comes not from violent action, but from the refusal to serve. Tyrants fall when the people withdraw their support.”

Murray N. Rothbard

Introduction to Étienne de La Boétie's Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude (1975), p. 39 http://books.google.com/books?id=6o-8P3iqf7IC&pg=PA39

“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.”

Murray N. Rothbard

But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance. <br class="br"> The Death Wish of the Anarcho-Communists (1970) http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard122.html.