Murray Rothbard Quotes

More emphasis was thus thrown upon the local governments than in England.

In the space of just 18 months from 1999 to 2001, one of the world’s most centralized nations [Indonesia] burst apart to become one of its most decentralized.

The capacity of the commonwealth government created under the local constitution to exercise governmental powers in local affairs is like that of local government in the states of the union in regard to non-federal affairs at the local level.

I know people don't like America very much, but the one thing it's very good on is local government.

I happen to be one who believes very strongly that state and local governments have their proper roles.

No political dreamer was ever wild enough to think of breaking down the lines which separate the States, and of compounding the American people into one common mass.

From Kurdistan to Catalonia to Scotland, from Syria to Chechnya to South Sudan, from indigenous communities in the Andean nations to tribal communities in sub-Saharan Africa, many people are shifting their primary political identities away from the nation-states in which they lived for many generations.

I fear Washington and centralized government more than I do Moscow.

My goal was to make New Jersey's state government a model for all other states to emulate, hopefully thereby to stem, or at least slow down, the flow of power to the federal government.

The powers of government exercised locally derive from a federal law authorizing government by consent in local affairs only, unless those affairs are otherwise governed by federal law.

America can enjoy a vital, fully functioning government, with all the benefits provided by Texas, while reducing Texas at the same time.

It would certainly be for the good of mankind to have all the mighty empires and monarchies of the world cantoned out into petty states and principalities.

Devolution [decentralization of government] cannot stop at the State House. It must go down to City Hall.

The principle [secession] itself is one of disintegration, and upon which no government can possibly endure

13 years after Indonesia began devolving power from the federal government to hundreds of sub provincial units, the link between local and national political interests have become extremely tenuous… although locally elected politicians may be delivering things that people want in their own back yards, they are not, collectively meeting the nation’s needs.

Centrally, I cannot interfere in states.

Whatever power may be necessary for the National Government a certain portion must necessarily be left in the States. It is impossible for one power to pervade the extreme parts of the U.S. so as to carry equal justice to them.

The way to have good and safe government is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to everyone exactly the functions in which he is competent ... It is by dividing and subdividing these Republics from the great national one down through all its subordinations until it ends in the administration of everyman's farm by himself, by placing under everyone what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best.

I think that decisions should rest in the hands of the states. I'm a federalist.

A local spirit will infallibly prevail much more in the members of Congress than a national spirit will prevail in the legislatures of the particular States.

We are entering an era in which national government, instead of directing, enables powerful regional and local initiatives to work, where Britain becomes as it should be - a Britain of nations and regions.

If the Bill of Rights was intended to place strict limits on federal power and protect individual and locality from the national government the 14th Amendment effectively defeated that purpose by placing the power to enforce the Bill of Rights in federal hands, where it was never intended to be.

Devolution will kill Nationalism stone dead.

Today many politicians suggest that where the federal government does not act, there must be anarchy. That view is odd, blinkering out the work of state and towns, which until recently did much of our charitable and cultural work. That view also blinkers out the role of mutual societies and churches.

I deny the right of Congress to force a slaveholding State upon an unwilling people. I deny their right to force a free State upon an unwilling people. I deny their right to force a good thing upon a people who are unwilling to receive it. The great principle is the right of every community to judge and decide for itself, whether a thing is right or wrong, whether it would be good or evil for them to adopt it; and the right of free action, the right of free thought, the right of free judgment upon the question is dearer to every true American than any other under a free government.