Murray Rothbard Quotes

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Murray Rothbard

Profession : Economist

Birth : March 2, 1926

In order to institute action, it is not sufficient that the individual man have unachieved ends that he would like to fulfill. He must also expect that certain modes of behavior will enable him to attain his ends. A man may have a desire for sunshine, but if he realizes that he can do nothing to achieve it, he does not act on this desire.

Murray Rothbard

All action is an attempt to exchange a less satisfactory state of affairs for a more satisfactory one.

Murray Rothbard

Play, as a consumers' good, is subject to the law of marginal utility, as are all goods, and the time spent in play will be balanced against the utility to be derived from other obtainable goods.

Murray Rothbard

On the market, all is harmony. But as soon as intervention appears and is established, conflict is created, for each may participate in a scramble to be a net gainer rather than a net loser - to be part of the invading team instead of one of the victims.

Murray Rothbard

Lacking the direct test of success or failure, the voter tends to turn, not to those politicians whose measures have the best chance of success, but to those with the ability to 'sell' their propaganda. Without grasping logical chains of deduction, the average voter will never be able to discover the error that the ruler makes.

Murray Rothbard

In the market, the fittest are those most able to serve the consumers; in government, the fittest are those most adept at wielding coercion and/or those most adroit at making demagogic appeals to the voting public.

Murray Rothbard

Praxeology - economics - provides no ultimate ethical judgments: it simply furnishes the indispensable data necessary to make such judgments.

Murray Rothbard

Among intellectuals who consider themselves 'scientific,' the phrase 'the nature of man' is apt to have the effect of a red flag on a bull.

Murray Rothbard

The fact that natural-law theorists derive from the very nature of man a fixed structure of law independent of time and place, or of habit or authority or group norms, makes that law a mighty force for radical change.

Murray Rothbard

The contemporary political scientist believes that he can avoid the necessity of moral judgments and that he can help frame public policy without committing himself to any ethical position.

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.

Murray Rothbard

If a man's free will to adopt ideas and values is inalienable, his freedom of action - his freedom to put these ideas into effect in the world - is not in such a fortunate condition.

Murray Rothbard

Economics has revealed a great truth about the natural law of human interaction: that not only is production essential to man's prosperity and survival, but so also is exchange.

Murray Rothbard

Ultimately, there is no entity called 'government'; there are only people forming themselves into groups called 'governments' and acting in a 'governmental' manner.

Murray Rothbard

'The General Theory' was not truly revolutionary at all but merely old and oft-refuted mercantilist and inflationist fallacies dressed up in shiny new garb, replete with newly constructed and largely incomprehensible jargon.

Murray Rothbard

In order to conquer the world of economics with his new theory, it was critical for Keynes to destroy his rivals within Cambridge itself. In his mind, he who controlled Cambridge controlled the world.

Murray Rothbard

Where did Keynes stand on overt fascism? From the scattered information now available, it should come as no surprise that Keynes was an enthusiastic advocate of the 'enterprising spirit' of Sir Oswald Mosley, the founder and leader of British fascism, in calling for a comprehensive 'national economic plan' in late 1930.

Murray Rothbard

The major reason for Keynes's rejection of communism was simply that he could scarcely identify with the grubby proletariat.

Murray Rothbard

Keynes eliminated economic theory's ancient role as spoilsport for inflationist and statist schemes, leading a new generation of economists on to academic power and to political pelf and privilege.

Murray Rothbard

As Ludwig von Mises conclusively demonstrated in 1912, money does not and cannot originate by order of the State or by some sort of social contract agreed upon by all citizens; it must always originate in the processes of the free market.

Murray Rothbard