Murray Rothbard Quotations

Murray Rothbard was an American economist and political author.

"The more consistently Austrian an economist is, the better a writer he will be."

"It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a 'dismal science.' But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance."
- Making Economic Sense (1995)

"Money is different from all other commodities: other things being equal, more shoes, or more discoveries of oil or copper benefit society, since they help alleviate natural scarcity. But once a commodity is established as a money on the market, no more money at all is needed. Since the only use of money is for exchange and reckoning, more dollars or pounds or marks in circulation cannot confer a social benefit: they will simply dilute the exchange value of every existing dollar or pound or mark. So it is a great boon that gold or silver are scarce and are costly to increase in supply.
"But if government manages to establish paper tickets or bank credit as money, as equivalent to gold grams or ounces, then the government, as dominant money-supplier, becomes free to create money costlessly and at will. As a result, this 'inflation' of the money supply destroys the value of the dollar or pound, drives up prices, cripples economic calculation, and hobbles and seriously damages the workings of the market economy."
- "Taking Money Back," The Freemanhttp://www.fee.org/publications/the-freeman/, September and October 1995http://mises.org/story/2882

"The cumulative development of a medium of exchange on the free market - is the only way money can become established. ... government is powerless to create money for the economy; it can only be developed by the processes of the free market."
- What Has Government Done to Our Money? http://mises.org/money.asp

"Money is a commodity ... not a useless token only good for exchanging; ... It differs from other commodities in being demanded mainly as a medium of exchange."
- What Has Government Done to Our Money? http://mises.org/money.asp

It doesn't matter what the supply of money is.
- What Has Government Done to Our Money? http://mises.org/money.asp

"Inflation may be defined as any increase in the economy's supply of money not consisting of an increase in the stock of the money metal."
- What Has Government Done to Our Money? http://mises.org/money.asp

"Money ... is the nerve center of the economic system. If, therefore, the state is able to gain unquestioned control over the unit of all accounts, the state will then be in a position to dominate the entire economic system, and the whole society."
- What Has Government Done to Our Money? http://mises.org/money.asp

"Inflation, being a fraudulent invasion of property, could not take place on the free market."
- What Has Government Done to Our Money? http://mises.org/money.asp

"Freedom can run a monetary system as superbly as it runs the rest of the economy. Contrary to many writers, there is nothing special about money that requires extensive governmental dictation."
- What Has Government Done to Our Money? http://mises.org/money.asp

"The natural tendency of the state is inflation."
- The Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar http://mises.org/story/1829

"Rights may be universal, but their enforcement must be local."
- Two Just Wars: 1776 and 1861 (1994)

"I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of any individual."
- Society Without A State (1975)

"The problem is that he originated nothing that was true, and that whatever he originated was wrong ..."
- An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought (1995)

"John Stuart was the quintessence of soft rather than hardcore, a woolly minded man of mush in striking contrast to his steel-edged father."
- An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought (1995)

"... shameless sponging on friends and relatives ... Marx affected a hatred and contempt for the very material resource he was too anxious to cadge and use so recklessly. Marx created an entire philosophy around his own corrupt attitudes toward money."
- An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought (1995)

"All my life, it seems, I have hated the guts of Max Lerner. Now, make no mistake: there is nothing personal in this rancor. I have never met, nor have I ever had any personal dealings with, Max. No, my absolute loathing for Max Lerner is disinterested, cosmic in its grandeur. It's just that ever since I was a toddler, this ugly homunculus, this pretentious jackass, has been there, towering over the American ideological scene. In the fifty-five years that I have been aware of Max's presence, in all of his many permutations and combinations and seeming twists and turns, he has taken the totally repellent position at every step of the way."