Murray N. Rothbard

• It is the state that is robbing all classes, rich & poor, black & white, worker & businessman alike; it is the state that is ripping us all off; it is the state that is the common enemy of mankind.
• For centuries the State has committed mass murder & called it "war"; then ennobled the mass slaughter that "war" involves. For centuries the State has enslaved people into its armed battalions & called it "conscription" in the "national service." For centuries the State has robbed people at bayonet point & called it "taxation."
• The free market is the only social system that rewards individual initiative, creativity & productivity on a mass scale.
• The welfare state has not eliminated poverty, but it has created a permanent underclass of dependents who are trapped in poverty.
• The market is a process, not a thing or a place & it is composed of human beings exchanging goods & services for mutual benefits.
• ,,stop all foreign aid. ―The Irrepressible Rothbard (p.41)
• Who wants good people in government? Good people should be in the private sector. Helping us out, helping themselves out in the private sector. We want schmoes in government. We want people who can't find the doorknob. Why waste productive people, as well as looking the taxpayer?
• The "boom-bust" cycle is generated by monetary intervention in the market, specifically bank credit expansion to business. ―America's Great Depression (p.9)
• Whenever someone starts talking about 'fair competition' or indeed, about 'fairness' in general, it is time to keep a sharp eye on your wallet, for it is about to be picked.
• The State is & always has been, the great single enemy of the human race, its liberty, happiness & progress.
• "we" are not the government; the government is not "us." The government does not in any accurate sense "represent" the majority of the people. ―Anatomy of the state (p.10)
• No action can be virtuous unless it is freely chosen.
• The state is that organization in society which attempts to maintain a monopoly on the use of force & violence in a given territorial area; in particular, it is the only organization in society that obtains its revenue not by voluntary contribution or payment for services rendered but by coercion.
• A tried & true method for bending subjects to the State's will is including guilt. Any increase in private well-being can be attacked as 'unconscionable greed', 'materialism', 'excessive affluence', profit-making can be attacked as 'exploitation', mutually benefical exchanges denounced as 'selfishness' & somehow with the conclusion always being drawn that more resources should be siphoned from the private to the public sector. (1974)