Murray Rothbard Libertarian Quotations

Libertarians regard the state as the Supreme, the eternal, the best organized aggressor against the persons and property of the mass of the public. All states everywhere, whether democratic, dictatorial, or monarchical, whether red, white, blue or brown.

After the Volcker Fund collapsed, I got another grant from the Lilly Endowment to do a history of the U.S., which I worked on from 1962-66. The original idea was to take the regular facts and put a libertarian assessment on everything.

What...can the government do to help the poor? The only answer is the libertarian answer: Get out of the way.

No one may threaten or commit violence ('aggress') against another man's person or property. Violence may be employed only against the man who commits such violence; that is, only defensively against the aggressive violence of another. In short, no violence may be employed against a non-aggressor. Here is the fundamental rule from which can be deduced the entire corpus of libertarian theory.

The freedom to speak is meaningless without the corollary freedom to keep silent.

The libertarian must never advocate or prefer a gradual, as opposed to an immediate and rapid, approach to his goal. For by doing so, he undercuts the overriding importance of his own goals and principles. And if he himself values his own goals so lightly, how highly will others value them.

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

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

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

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