Murray Rothbard Quotes

A State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes—will find that with small men, no great thing can really be accomplished.

In a market economy, however, the individual has some possibility of escaping from the power of the state.

We have to recognize that the freedom of the individual has to be protected not only from the power of the state, but even more so from economic and societal power.

Within the Russian system, everything depends on the character of those few who hold full power in their hands. The position of the individual within present-day Russia has been described as follows: far-reaching economic security by sacrificing personal liberty.

Advocating the expansion of the powers of the state is treason to mankind

Individual liberty is individual power, and as the power of a community is a mass compounded of individual powers, the nation which enjoys the most freedom must necessarily be in proportion to its numbers the most powerful nation.

The object of the state is always the same: to limit the individual, to tame him, to subordinate him, to subjugate him.

Change depends on people knowing the truth. Change depends on people speaking that truth out loud. That's what movements do. Movements educate people to the truth. They pass along information and ideas that many others do not know, and they cause them to ask questions, to challenge their own long-held beliefs. ... Movements are the way ordinary people get more freedom and justice. Movements are how we keep a check on power and those who abuse it.

I have no right to be a king, but I have the right to create a king.

Government is force.

Extensive and organized power over large populations does not suffice to make a nation

Civil liberty is the power of a civil society or state to govern itself by its own discretion or by laws of its own making, without being subject to the impositions of any power in appointing and directing which the collective body of the people have no concern and over which they have no control

No nation can be free unless it is strong enough and active enough to control, whenever necessary, every private individual or group whose action affects the general welfare

The collectivizations and socializations in the economy count for nothing when State power is in the hands of the bourgeoisie.

The practice of a ruling power in the State is but a feeble proof of its legality.

Democratic rights develop when the ruled demand them and have the means to prevail.

Whether the state be Marxist or capitalist, it makes no difference. The dominant ideology is that of sovereignty.

It has been held, right up to the present day, that the freedom of individual must take second place to the security of the State.....

It’s only at certain points in history that people realize just how much power that they have.

Anarchists know that a long period of education must precede any great fundamental change in society, hence they do not believe in vote begging, nor political campaigns, but rather in the development of self-thinking individuals.

Was not the issue this: whether mankind should be divided between those who command and those who serve; between those who use others at their will and those who must submit; whether the measure of a man's power to shape his own destiny should be the force at his disposal? Our nation was founded upon an answer to those questions, and we have fought this war to make good that answer.

We are unalterably opposed to any class government, whether it be the existing dictatorship of the plutocracy or the dictatorship of the proletariat. Both are essentially undemocratic and un-American. Both are destructive of private initiative liberty.

Speaking truth to power is never going to be easy.

Literacy has fueled most of the freedom movements in the last centuries.

Somehow, the guys in power have to be reached by counter-power, or through a change in their hearts and minds, or change will not come.