Murray Rothbard Quotes about Liberty

There can be no such thing as 'fairness in taxation.' Taxation is nothing but organized theft, and the concept of a 'fair tax' is therefore every bit as absurd as that of 'fair theft.'

The State is, and always has been, the great single enemy of the human race, its liberty, happiness, and progress.

It is easy to be conspicuously 'compassionate' if others are being forced to pay the cost.

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

The libertarian sees the State as a giant gang of organized criminals, who live off the theft called "taxation" and use the proceeds to kill, enslave, and generally push people around. Therefore, any property in the hands of the State is in the hands of thieves, and should be liberated as quickly as possible. Any person or group who liberates such property, who confiscates or appropriates it from the State, is performing a virtuous act and a signal service to the cause of liberty.

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

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.

You don't need a treaty to have free trade.

It is not the business of the law to make anyone good or reverent or moral or clean or upright.

There can be no truly moral choice unless that choice is made in freedom; similarly, there can be no really firmly grounded and consistent defense of freedom unless that defense is rooted in moral principle.

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.

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.

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.

The fundamental axiom, then, for the study of man is the existence of individual consciousness

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