Murray N. Rothbard Quotes

It is clearly absurd to limit the term 'education' to a person's formal schooling.

War is Mass Murder, Conscription is Slavery, Taxation is Robbery.

If the bulk of the public were really convinced of the illegitimacy of the State, if it were convinced that the State is nothing more nor less than a bandit gang writ large, then the State would soon collapse to take on no more status or breadth of existence than another Mafia gang.

The very term ‘public utility’ … is an absurd one. Every good is useful ‘to the public,’ and almost every good … may be considered ‘necessary.’ Any designation of a few industries as ‘public utilities’ is completely arbitrary and unjustified.

There are two and only two ways that any economy can be organized. One is by freedom and voluntary choice - the way of the market. The other is by force and dictation - the way of the State.

I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of any individual.

While liberals are in favor of any sexual activity engaged in by two consenting adults, when these consenting adults engage in trade or exchange, the liberals step in to harass, cripple, restrict, or prohibit that trade. And yet both the consenting sexual activity and the trade are similar expressions of liberty in action.

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

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.

No action can be virtuous unless it is freely chosen.

To be moral, an act must be free.

Taxation is theft, purely and simply even though it is theft on a grand and colossal scale which no acknowledged criminals could hope to match. It is a compulsory seizure of the property of the State’s inhabitants, or subjects.