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All Quotes by author - Murray Rothbard

" After the Volcker Fund collapsed, I got another grant from the Lilly Endowment to do a history of the U.S., which I worked on from 1962-66. The original idea was to take the regular facts and put a libertarian assessment on everything. "

" All action is an attempt to exchange a less satisfactory state of affairs for a more satisfactory one. "

" All government wars are unjust. "

" Among intellectuals who consider themselves 'scientific,' the phrase 'the nature of man' is apt to have the effect of a red flag on a bull. "

" An attempt by the Mongols to introduce paper money in Persia in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries flopped because no one would accept it. The public had no confidence in the paper money despite the awesomely coercive decrees that always marked Mongol rule. "

" Apart from medieval China, which invented both paper and printing centuries before the West, the world had never seen government paper money until the colonial government of Massachusetts emitted a fiat paper issue in 1690. "

" A robber who justified his theft by saying that he really helped his victims, by his spending giving a boost to retail trade, would find few converts; but when this theory is clothed in Keynesian equations and impressive references to the 'multiplier effect,' it unfortunately carries more conviction. "

" As 'Austrian' business cycle theory has pointed out, any bank credit inflation sets up conditions for boom-and-bust; there is no need for prices actually to rise. "

" As Ludwig von Mises conclusively demonstrated in 1912, money does not and cannot originate by order of the State or by some sort of social contract agreed upon by all citizens; it must always originate in the processes of the free market. "

" As the greatest and last major crisis before 1836, the panic of 1819 holds considerable interest for the study of business cycles and for the present day. It was an economy in transition, as it were, to a state where business cycles as we know them would develop. "

" By the 1890s, the leading Wall Street bankers were becoming increasingly disgruntled with their own creation, the National Banking System... while the banking system was partially centralized under their leadership, it was not centralized enough. "

" Commercial banks - that is, fractional reserve banks - create money out of thin air. Essentially, they do it in the same way as counterfeiters. "

" Declines in specific industries can never ignite a general depression. Shifts in data will cause increases in activity in one field, declines in another. "

" Early economic theory was rooted in the Italian, French, and Spanish traditions, which were subjectivist oriented. Then it shifted onto the terrible path by Smith and Ricardo and the British classical tradition, which is 'objectivist' - values are in inherent in production. "

" Economics has revealed a great truth about the natural law of human interaction: that not only is production essential to man's prosperity and survival, but so also is exchange. "

" Every man must have freedom, must have the scope to form, test, and act upon his own choices, for any sort of development of his own personality to take place. He must, in short, be free in order that he may be fully human. "

" Famine emerges from a lack of interlocal trade; when one locality's food crop fails, since there is virtually no trade with other localities, the bulk of the people starve. It is precisely the permeation of the free market throughout the world that has virtually ended this scourge of famine by permitting trade between areas. "

" Fractional reserve banks are sitting ducks and are always subject to contraction. When the banks' state of inherent bankruptcy is discovered, for example, people will tend to cash in their deposits, and the contractionary, deflationary pressure could be severe. "

" Gold and silver are always in demand, regardless of clime, century, or government in power. But public confidence in and, hence, demand for paper money depends on the ultimate confidence - or lack thereof - of the public in the viability of the issuing government. "

" Hoover had prevented 'an immediate attack upon wages as a basis of maintaining profits,' but the result of wiping out profits and maintaining artificial wage rates was chronic, unprecedented depression. "

" I do not go so far as the extreme male 'sexists' who contend that women should confine themselves to the home and children and that any search for alternative careers is unnatural. On the other hand, I do not see much more support for the opposite contention that domestic-type women are violating their natures. "

" If a man's free will to adopt ideas and values is inalienable, his freedom of action - his freedom to put these ideas into effect in the world - is not in such a fortunate condition. "

" If government wishes to see a depression ended as quickly as possible and the economy returned to normal prosperity, what course should it adopt? The first and clearest injunction is: Don't interfere with the market's adjustment process. "

" If taxes and government spending are both slashed, then the salutary result will be to lower the parasitic burden of government taxes and spending upon the productive activities of the private sector. "

" If you wish to know how libertarians regard the State and any of its acts, simply think of the State as a criminal band, and all of the libertarian attitudes will logically fall into place. "

" In a sense, the market, by expecting a fall in prices, discounts that fall and makes it happen right away instead of later. Expectations speed up future price reactions. "

" In his second Inaugural Address, on March 5, 1821, Monroe admitted at last to a general depression of prices, but only as a means of explaining the great decline in the federal revenue. Despite this, he asserted that the situation of America presented a 'gratifying spectacle.' "

" In order to conquer the world of economics with his new theory, it was critical for Keynes to destroy his rivals within Cambridge itself. In his mind, he who controlled Cambridge controlled the world. "

" In order to continue in office, any government (not simply a 'democratic' government) must have the support of the majority of its subjects. This support, it must be noted, need not be active enthusiasm; it may well be passive resignation as if to an inevitable law of nature. "

" In order to institute action, it is not sufficient that the individual man have unachieved ends that he would like to fulfill. He must also expect that certain modes of behavior will enable him to attain his ends. A man may have a desire for sunshine, but if he realizes that he can do nothing to achieve it, he does not act on this desire. "

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