QuoteProject
The State lives by its very existence on the two-fold and pervasive employment of aggressive violence against the very liberty and property of individuals that it is supposed to be defending.
Murray Rothbard
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote critiques the state for using violence to maintain order while simultaneously undermining individual rights.

Murray Rothbard's quote highlights the paradox of the state's role in society, where it claims to protect individual liberties and property yet often resorts to aggressive violence to fulfill this supposed duty. This critique questions the legitimacy of state power and suggests that the very mechanisms used to enforce laws can infringe upon the freedoms they are meant to safeguard.

Themes

StateViolenceLibertyPropertyIndividuals

In practice

Example use cases

This quote could be used in a debate about government power versus individual rights.

More from Murray Rothbard

Human life is not some sort of race or game in which each person should start from an identical mark. It is an attempt by each man to be as happy as possible. And each person could not begin from the same point, for the world has not just come into being; it is diverse and infinitely varied in its parts. The mere fact that one individual is necessarily born in a different place from someone else immediately insures that his inherited opportunity cannot be the same as his neighbor's.
Murray RothbardRead
Ultimately, there is no entity called 'government'; there are only people forming themselves into groups called 'governments' and acting in a 'governmental' manner.
Murray RothbardRead
In the market, the fittest are those most able to serve the consumers; in government, the fittest are those most adept at wielding coercion and/or those most adroit at making demagogic appeals to the voting public.
Murray RothbardRead
The 'boom-bust' cycle is generated by monetary intervention in the market, specifically bank credit expansion to business.
Murray RothbardRead
No one may threaten or commit violence ('aggress') against another man's person or property. Violence may be employed only against the man who commits such violence; that is, only defensively against the aggressive violence of another. In short, no violence may be employed against a non-aggressor. Here is the fundamental rule from which can be deduced the entire corpus of libertarian theory.
Murray RothbardRead
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.
Murray RothbardRead

Similar quotes

Things we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end, if not always in the way we expect.
J. K. RowlingRead
When a magician lets you notice something on your own, his lie becomes impenetrable.
TellerRead
Without uncertainty and the unknown, life is just a stale repetition of outworn memories. You become the victim of the past, and your tormentor today is yourself left over from yesterday. Relinquish your attachment to the known, step into the unknown, and you will step into the field of all possibilities.
Deepak ChopraRead
Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.
Thomas A KempisRead
The enemy resembles us. Therefore, he needs to be approached not as an assembly of 'targets' to be destroyed one by one; but as a living, intelligent entity capable of acting and reacting.
Martin Van CreveldRead
The internal dialogue is what grounds people in the daily world. The world is such and such or so and so, only because we talk to ourselves about its being such and such and so and so. The passageway into the world of shamans opens up after the warrior has learned to shut off his internal dialogue
Carlos CastanedaRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.