State

The ordered organization of coercion we call the State.

Socialism, p. 280

The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning. Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.

Human Action, p. 715; p. 719

The whole of mankind’s progress has had to be achieved against the resistance and opposition of the state and its power of coercion.

Liberalism, p. 58

A new type of superstition has got hold of people’s minds, the worship of the state. People demand the exercise of the methods of coercion and compulsion, of violence and threat. Woe to anybody who does not bend his knee to the fashionable idols!

Omnipotent Government, p. 11

The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men. The worst evils which mankind ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster.

Omnipotent Government, p. 47

He who proclaims the godliness of the State and the infallibility of its priests, the bureaucrats, is considered as an impartial student of the social sciences.

Planned Chaos, p. 16

It is characteristic of current political thinking to welcome every suggestion which aims at enlarging the influence of government.

On the Manipulation of Money and Credit, p. 107

How fine the world would be if the “State” were free to cure all ills! It is one step only from such a mentality to the perfect totalitarianism of Stalin and Hitler.

Bureaucracy, pp. 75–76

No reform can render perfectly satisfactory the operation of an institution the essential activity of which consists in inflicting pain.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 100

Every step a government takes beyond the fulfillment of its essential functions of protecting the smooth operation of the market economy against aggression, whether on the part of domestic or foreign disturbers, is a step forward on the road that directly leads into the totalitarian system where there is no freedom at all.

Human Action, No Entry; p. 282

Louis XIV was very frank and sincere when he said: I am the State. The modern etatist is modest. He says: I am the servant of the State; but, he implies, the State is God. You could revolt against a Bourbon king, and the French did it. This was, of course, a struggle of man against man. But you cannot revolt against the god State and against his humble handy man, the bureaucrat.

Bureaucracy, pp. 74–75

Après nous le déluge (After us, the deluge) is an old maxim of government.

Socialism, p. 179

There is no reason to idolize the police power and ascribe to its omnipotence and omniscience. There are things which it can certainly not accomplish. It cannot conjure away the scarcity of the factors of production, it cannot make people more prosperous, it cannot raise the productivity of labor. All it can achieve is to prevent gangsters from frustrating the efforts of those people who are intent upon promoting material well-being.

Human Action, p. 827; p. 831

It is not God. It is simply compulsion and coercion; it is the police power.

Omnipotent Government, p. 47

The state is a human institution, not a superhuman being. He who says “state” means coercion and compulsion. He who says: There should be a law concerning this matter, means: The armed men of the government should force people to do what they do not want to do, or not to do what they like. He who says: This law should be better enforced, means: the police should force people to obey this law. He who says: The state is God, deifies arms and prisons.

Omnipotent Government, p. 47

Not every apparatus of compulsion and coercion is called a state. Only one which is powerful enough to maintain its existence, for some time at least, by its own force is commonly called a state. A gang of robbers, which because of the comparative weakness of its forces has no prospect of successfully resisting for any length of time the forces of another organization, is not entitled to be called a state. The state will either smash or tolerate a gang. In the first case the gang is not a state because its independence lasts for a short time only; in the second case it is not a state because it does not stand on its own might.

Omnipotent Government, p. 46

The apparatus of compulsion and coercion is always operated by mortal men.

Omnipotent Government, p. 47

We see that as soon as we surrender the principle that the state should not interfere in any questions touching of the individual’s mode of life, we end by regulating and restricting the latter down to the smallest detail. The personal freedom of the individual is abrogated. He becomes a slave of the community bound to obey the dictates of the majority.

Liberalism, p. 54

The essence of etatism is to take from one group in order to give to another. The more it can take the more it can give. It is to the interest of those whom the government wishes to favor that their state become as large as possible.

Omnipotent Government, p. 94

Whoever wishes peace among peoples must fight statism.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 77