Go Premium
Support Quotosaurus while enjoying an ad-free experience and premium features.
View Plans“ ”Another potent ideological force is to deprecate the individual and exalt the collectivity of society. For since any given rule implies majority acceptance, any ideological danger to that rule can only start from one or a few independently-thinking individuals. The new idea, much less the new critical idea, must needs begin as a small minority opinion; therefore, the State must nip the view in the bud by ridiculing any view that defies the opinions of the mass. “Listen only to your brothers” or “adjust to society” thus become ideological weapons for crushing individual dissent. By such measures, the masses will never learn of the nonexistence of their Emperor’s clothes.
About Murray N. Rothbard
Murray Newton Rothbard (2 March 1926 – 7 January 1995) was an American economist of the Austrian School, an historian of both economic thought and American history, and a political philosopher whose writings and personal influence played a seminal role in the development of modern libertarianism. Rothbard was the founder and leading theoretician of anarcho-capitalism, a staunch advocate of natural law, and a central figure in the twentieth-century American libertarian movement. He was the author of over twenty books on anarchist theory, history, economics, and other subjects.
Biography information from Wikiquote
Additional quotes by Murray N. Rothbard
Where the questions concern governmental power in a sovereign nation, it is not possible to select an umpire who is outside government. Every national government, so long as it is a government, must have the final say on its own power.
It is evident that the State needs the intellectuals; it is not so evident why intellectuals need the State.
Scratch an egalitarian, and you will inevitably find a statist.