Murray Rothbard Quotes

Government is the natural enemy of freedom.

The state remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men.

I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war on liberty, and that the democratic government is at least as bad as any of the other forms.

The government continues to erode our freedom.

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

The freedom of individuals from compulsion or coercion never was, and is not now, the normal state of human affairs. The normal state for the ordinary person is tyranny, arbitrary control and abuse mainly by their own government.

If we look at the black record of mass murder, exploitation, and tyranny levied on society by governments over the ages, we need not be loath to abandon the Leviathan State and . . . try freedom.

Government, which does not and did not grant us our rights, must not now seek to deny them by using fear as its justification.

The worst thing in this world, next to anarchy, is government.

It is not only under Nazi rule that police excesses are inimical to freedom. It is easy to make light of insistence on scrupulous regard for the safeguards of civil liberties when invoked on behalf of the unworthy. It is too easy. History bears testimony that by such disregard are the rights of liberty extinguished, heedlessly at first, then stealthily, and brazenly in the end.

Our liberty cannot depend on the good intention of those in power.

The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.

A little government involvement is just as dangerous as a lot - because the first leads inevitably to the second.

A government is the most dangerous threat to man

If you think shrinking government and getting it less involved in your life is a hallmark of tyranny it is only because you are either grotesquely ignorant or because you subscribe to a statist ideology that believes the expansion of the state is the expansion of liberty.

Whoever says State necessarily says domination, and, consequently, slavery; a State without slavery, open or concealed, is inconceivable: that is why we are enemies of the State.

The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.

Freedom for the government is enslavement for the people. When the government is free the people are enslaved. When the government is contained then the people are free.

It must be admitted that the tendency of the human race toward liberty is largely thwarted, especially in France. This is greatly due to a fatal desire-learned from the teachings of antiquity-that our writers on public affairs have in common: They desire to set themselves above mankind in order to arrange, organize, and regulate it according to their fancy.

Whenever all men are...hastening to be slaves or tyrants we make Liberalism the prime bogey.

We libertarians are not the spokesmen for any ethnic or economic class; we are the spokesmen for all classes, for all of the public; we strive to see all of these groups united, hand-in-hand, in opposition to the plundering and privileged minority that constitutes the rulers of the State.

Man and fascism cannot co-exist. If fascism conquers, man will cease to exist and there will remain only man-like creatures that have undergone an internal transformation. But if man, man who is endowed with reason and kindness, should conquer, then Fascism must perish, and those who have submitted to it will once again become people.

There is no question that if one were to ask whether we Americans are moving towards more liberty or more government control over our lives, the answer would unambiguously be the latter - more government control over our lives. We might have reached a point where the trend is irreversible and that is a true tragedy for if liberty is lost in America, it will be lost for all times and all places.

Personal freedom has grown greatly within China, and that will provoke ever more points of conflict between the individual and state.