Austrian Economics Quotes

“Taxation is theft, purely and simply even though it is theft on a grand and colossal scale which no acknowledged criminals could hope to match. It is a compulsory seizure of the property of the State’s inhabitants, or subjects.”
― Murray N. Rothbard

“It is easy to be conspicuously 'compassionate' if others are being forced to pay the cost.”
― Murray N. Rothbard

“Freedom is indivisible. As soon as one starts to restrict it, one enters upon a decline on which it is difficult to stop.”
― Ludwig von Mises

“No man can rightfully be required to join, or support, an association whose protection he does not desire.”
― Lysander Spooner

“While liberals are in favor of any sexual activity engaged in by two consenting adults, when these consenting adults engage in trade or exchange, the liberals step in to harass, cripple, restrict, or prohibit that trade. And yet both the consenting sexual activity and the trade are similar expressions of liberty in action.”
― Murray N. Rothbard

“Libertarians make no exceptions to the golden rule and provide no moral loophole, no double standard, for government. That is, libertarians believe that murder is murder and does not become sanctified by reasons of state if committed by the government. We believe that theft is theft and does not become legitimated because organized robbers call their theft "taxation." We believe that enslavement is enslavement even if the institution committing that act calls it "conscription." In short, the key to libertarian theory is that it makes no exceptions in its universal ethic for government.”
― Murray N. Rothbard

“In proportion as you give the state power to do things for you, you give it power to do things to you.”
― Albert Jay Nock

“Liberty should be understood as freedom from the government, specifically, freedom from the initiation of physical force by the government.”
― George Reisman

“In particular, the State has arrogated to itself a compulsory monopoly over police and military services, the provision of law, judicial decision-making, the mint and the power to create money, unused land ("the public domain"), streets and highways, rivers and coastal waters, and the means of delivering mail...the State relies on control of the levers of propaganda to persuade its subjects to obey or even exalt their rulers.”
― Murray N. Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty

“For anyone who thinks "profit" is evil, I have a challenge for you: try NOT to get any profit in the next week. Profit simply means increasing how much valuable stuff you have, and if you don't profit, you die. Literally. For example, don't buy any food for a week, because when you buy food (or anything), it's because you value the food MORE than you value the money you trade for it. If you didn't, you wouldn't make the trade. So you PROFIT (and so does the seller) every time you buy something. And every time you sell something, or work for money, etc. So before condemning "profit" (or "greed" or "selfishness," for that matter), see if you can survive without it. Then stop repeating vague collectivist BS, and learn to distinguish between "win/win" events (voluntary exchange) where BOTH sides profit, and "win/lose" events, where one side benefits by harming the other side. By the way, "government" is ALWAYS the latter.”
― Larken Rose

“Price controls almost invariably produce black markets, where prices are not only higher than the legally permitted prices, but also higher than they would be in a free market, since the legal risks must also be compensated. While small-scale black markets may function in secrecy, large-scale black markets usually require bribes to officials to look the other way.”
― Thomas Sowell

“People are not embracing collectivism because they have accepted bad economics. They are accepting bad economics because they have embraced collectivism.”
― Ayn Rand

“In spite of its alluring name, the welfare state stands or falls by compulsion. It is compulsion imposed upon us with the state’s power to punish noncompliance. Once this is clear, it is equally clear that the welfare state is an evil the same as every restriction of freedom.”
― Wilhelm Röpke

“War has been the necessary and inevitable consequence of the establishment of a monopoly on security.”
― Gustave de Molinari

“Men do not live in perfect harmony with each other. Rather, again and again conflicts arise between them. And the source of these conflicts is always the same: the scarcity of goods. I want to do X with a given good G and you want to do simultaneously Y with the very same good. Because it is impossible for you and me to do simultaneously X and Y with G, you and I must clash. If a superabundance of goods existed, i.e., if, for instance, G were available in unlimited supply, our conflict could be avoided. We could both simultaneously do ‘our thing’ with G. But most goods do not exist in superabundance. Ever since mankind left the Garden of Eden, there has been and always will be scarcity all-around us.”
― Hans-Hermann Hoppe, A Short History of Man: Progress and Decline

“Without anarchy, there would be chaos.”
― Jeffrey Tucker

“Freedom is the foundation for all wonderful things in life.”
― Jeffrey Tucker

“The disdain of profit is due to ignorance, and to an attitude that we may if we wish admire in the ascetic who has chosen to be content with a small share of the riches of this world, but which, when actualised in the form of restrictions on profits of others, is selfish to the extent that it imposes asceticism, and indeed deprivations of all sorts, on others.”
― Friedrich Hayek

“Here is a principle to use in all aspects of economics and policy. When you find a good or service that is in huge demand but the supply is so limited to the point that the price goes up and up, look for the regulation that is causing it. This applies regardless of the sector, whether transportation, gas, education, food, beer, or daycare. There is something in the way that is preventing the market from working as it should. If you look carefully enough, you will find the hand of the state making the mess in question.”
― Jeffrey Tucker

“There are two and only two ways that any economy can be organized. One is by freedom and voluntary choice—the way of the market. The other is by force and dictation—the way of the State.”
― Murray N. Rothbard

“The first people to get the new money are the counterfeiters, which they use to buy various goods and services. The second receivers of the new money are the retailers who sell those goods to the counterfeiters. And on and on the new money ripples out through the system, going from one pocket or till to another. As it does so, there is an immediate redistribution effect. For first the counterfeiters, then the retailers, etc. have new money and monetary income they use to bid up goods and services, increasing their demand and raising the prices of the goods that they purchase. But as prices of goods begin to rise in response to the higher quantity of money, those who haven't yet received the new money find the prices of the goods they buy have gone up, while their own selling prices or incomes have not risen. In short, the early receivers of the new money in this market chain of events gain at the expense of those who receive the money toward the end of the chain, and still worse losers are the people (e.g., those on fixed incomes such as annuities, interest, or pensions) who never receive the new money at all.”
― Murray N. Rothbard

“The instant that any government obtains a monetary printing press, it becomes a deeply dishonest government, empowered to rob people by stealth. A government with the power to print money knows no limits.”
― Jeffrey Tucker

“Ultimately, we need to take control over the money supply out of the hands of our governments and make the production of money again subject to the principle of free association. The first step to endorsing and promoting this strategy is to realize that governments do not—indeed cannot—fulfill any positive role whatever through the control of our money.”
― Jörg Guido Hülsmann

“The phenomenon of economic ignorance is so widespread, and its consequences so frightening, that the objective of reducing that ignorance becomes a goal invested with independent moral worth.”
― Israel M. Kirzner

“In the same way that central banking nearly wrecked the world and created one calamity after another, bitcoin can save the world one transaction at a time.
It is time for a new beginning.”
― Jeffrey Tucker

“The valuations which result in determination of definite prices are different. Each party attaches a higher value to the good he receives than to that he gives away. The exchange ratio, the price, is not the product of equality of valuation, but on the contrary, the product of a discrepancy in valuation.”
― Ludwig von Mises

“Bitcoin represents the most authentic implementation of Austrian monetary principles in human history. It achieves what gold aspired to but couldn't fully deliver due to physical limitations”
― Gun Gun Febrianza

“When it becomes dominated by a collectivist creed, democracy will inevitably destroy itself.”
― F.A. Hayek

“Inflation is caused by money printing. Period.”
― Daniella Liberati, Beyond Money: Regaining Sovereignty, Rediscovering Humanity

“When human beings act, they inevitably synthesise memories of the past into new expectations and mental images for the future, regarding the different stages in the action process they will follow. The future is never predetermined, but instead the actor imagines, creates and builds it step by step. Therefore, the future is always uncertain, since it has yet to be done or built, and the only part of it the actor possesses consists of specific ideas, mental images or expectations he hopes to realise through the completion of stages he imagines.”
― Jesús Huerta de Soto, Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles