Murray Rothbard Quotes

There is no 'natural' order, only the way things are.

Simply because something is a populist movement doesn't make it either good or bad.

The most powerful forces in economics are not numbers or facts. They are prejudices and preferences. No amount of evidence will ever change the degree to which many of the rich and powerful prefer themselves to be richer and more powerful and others poorer and weaker.

There is a lack of critical assessment of the past. But you have to understand that the current ruling elite is actually the old ruling elite. So they are incapable of a self-critical approach to the past.

But I don't write about sex for today's teenagers. Or Doc Martens boots either. I'm more interested in exploring how exactly the world is run, which doesn't really change that much from one generation to another.

I was dissatisfied with the status quo back in the 80's, particularly how the West was represented in federation. I wanted to try to change it.

And when people in power can stay in power they do very little to tinker with the apparatus that put them in power.

In every truth, the beneficiaries of a system cannot be expected to destroy it.

I have met the people who run the world, and I am not in awe of them.

If repression has indeed been the fundamental link between power, knowledge, and sexuality since the classical age, it stands to reason that we will not be able to free ourselves from it except at a considerable cost.

Liberal institutions soon cease from being liberal the moment they are soundly established.

The status quo is a powerful force.

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.

I think a lot of things that are the norm, that are very systematic, don't work.

There is a bias; there is a Washington mentality.

This is an important thing: People who live in the mainstream and the status quo think that everyone else is there to serve them.

People in power make the path to power. It means that we will always get the same system, and it's one that is not necessarily in the interest of people's lives.

It is privilege that causes evil in the world, not wickedness, and not men.

I have not said your values are wrong. But neither are they right. They are simply judgments. Assessments. Decisions. For the most part, they are decisions made not by you, but by someone else. Your parents, perhaps. Your religion. Your teachers, historians, politicians.

To challenge norms, presuppositions, practices in communities across this country - where the unconscious valorization and celebration of whiteness and conscious resistance to trying to grapple with black and brown and other peoples of color's ideas and identities - makes a huge difference.

The inability to grasp the pathology* of our oligarchic rulers is one of our gravest faults.

The left have not the ability to get into reality in any way, shape, manner, or form.

All of us are subjected to somebody else's power at some point. So once in a while you kiss ass. So what? Either you make your peace with that early, or you end up living your life as a crank and a misfit.

The one who decides who goes ahead has the upper hand, regardless of who gets to go. This is why many women do not feel empowered by such privileges as having doors held open for them. The advantage of going first through the door is less salient to them than the disadvantage of being granted the right to walk through a door by someone who is framed, by his magnanimous gesture, as the arbiter of the right-of-way.

If you're a status quo writer, you're considered to not be political but that's as political as if you're a progressive writer. Some politics are asked to show their passports and others aren't. In the Dominican Republique, if you're slightly progressive, people have a lot of suspicions that you're up to some sort of conspiracy, that this is some sort of plot. On the other hand, if you're conservative and mainstream, people tend to take that as a given and don't notice the politics.