A Quote by Murray Rothbard

The great non sequitur committed by defenders of the State, is to leap from the necessity of society to the necessity of the State.

Murray Rothbard

Quote Topics

Committed Defenders Great Leap Necessity Society State

Quote Author

Murray Rothbard
American - Economist
March 2, 1926 - January 7, 1995

Think of civil society and the state as joined in a marriage of necessity. You already know who the wife is, the one who is supposed to love, cherish and obey: that's civil society. Think of the state as the domineering husband who expects to have a monopoly on power, on violence, on planning and policymaking.

Rebecca Solnit

Defence was an afterthought, prompted by necessity; and its introduction as a State function, though effected doubtless with a view to the strengthening of the State, was really and in principle the initiation of the State's destruction.

Benjamin Tucker

War, even in the best state of an army, with all the alleviations of courtesy and honor, with all the correctives of morality and religion, is nevertheless so great an evil, that to engage in it without a clear necessity is a crime of the blackest dye. When the necessity is clear, it then becomes a crime to shrink from it.

Robert Southey

Hegel was the first to state correctly the relation between freedom and necessity. To him, freedom is the insight into necessity.

Friedrich Engels

Men only act in a state of necessity and usually only recognise necessity in a situation of crisis.

Jean Monnet

The government should cultivate the view also among the propertyless classes of the population, those who are the most numerous and the least educated, that the state is not only an institution of necessity but also of welfare. By recognizable and direct advantages they must be led to look upon the state not as an agency devised solely for the protection of the better-situated classes of society but also as one serving their needs and interests.

Otto von Bismarck

Manhood begins when we have in any way made truce with Necessity; begins even when we have surrendered to Necessity, as the most part only do; but begins joyfully and hopefully only when we have reconciled ourselves to Necessity; and thus, in reality, triumphed over it, and felt that in Necessity we are free.

Thomas Carlyle

A free press is not a privilege but an organic necessity in a great society. ... A great society is simply a big and complicated urban society.

Walter Lippmann

Great necessity elevates man, petty necessity casts him down

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

And the Marshall Plan, to us, meant a general who had turned into a secretary of state, and that the secretary of state saw the necessity of the reconstruction of these European countries that had suffered so heavily.

Giovanni Agnelli

Necessity is an evil; but there is no necessity for continuing to live subject to necessity.

Epicurus

The great drama of Russian history has been between its state and society. Put simply, Russia has always had too much state and not enough society.

Fareed Zakaria

Necessity does everything well. In our condition of universal dependence, it seems heroic to let the petitioner be the judge of his necessity, and to give all that is asked, though at great inconvenience.