Top 100 Larken Rose Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “The ability of people to resist tyranny depends largely upon whether they accept the myth of “authority” or not. Those who can see the injustice committed by “government,” but who continue to believe that they must “follow the law” and “work within the system,” will never achieve justice.”

— Larken Rose

2. “Politics: the art of using euphemisms, lies, emotionalism and fear-mongering to dupe average people into accepting – or even demanding – their own enslavement.”

— Larken Rose

3. “The promise of a “government” that would be a servant of the people, protecting their rights but otherwise leaving them in peace, grew into the largest, most powerful authoritarian empire the world has ever known, including the largest and most intrusive extortion racket ever known, the largest and most powerful war machine in history, and the most intrusive and invasive bureaucracy in history.”

— Larken Rose

4. “You call yourselves Christians, or Jews, or claim to follow some other religion, but the truth is, what you call your religion is empty window-dressing. What you truly worship, the god you really bow to, what you really believe in, is the state. ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ ‘Thou shalt not murder.’ Unless you can do it by way of government. Then it’s just fine, isn’t it?”

— Larken Rose

5. “Civilization, a state of peaceful coexistence, is not the result of everyone believing the same thing, but of people agreeing to refrain from initiating violence, even against people who do not believe the same things.”

— Larken Rose

6. “Ayn Rand called it ‘the sanction of the victim.’ If you give the impression to your oppressor that you accept, or even approve of, his oppression of you, things will only get worse. Whatever else happens, never tell someone that you accept that he has the right to rule you. Never. You will make him into a monster, and you will make yourself into a slave.”

— Larken Rose

7. “If you love death and destruction, oppression and suffering, injustice and violence, repression and torture, helplessness and despair, perpetual conflict and bloodshed, then teach your children to respect “authority,” and teach them that obedience is a virtue.”

— Larken Rose

8. “If you call it ‘taxation’ and ‘war,’ it stops being a sin, right? After all, it was only your god that said you shouldn’t steal and murder, but the state said it was okay. It’s pretty obvious which one outranks the other in your minds. Despite all the churches, synagogues, and mosques we see around us, this nation has one god, and only one god, and that god is called ‘government’.”

— Larken Rose

9. “The truth is that any form of authoritarian control – any type of “government,” whether constitutional, democratic, socialist, fascist, or anything else – will result in a set of masters forcibly oppressing a group of slaves. That is what “authority” is – all it ever has been, and all it ever could be, no matter how many layers of euphemisms and pleasant rhetoric are used in an attempt to hide it.”

— Larken Rose

10. “The belief in “authority,” which includes all belief in “government,” is irrational and self-contradictory; it is contrary to civilization and morality, and constitutes the most dangerous, destructive superstition that has ever existed. Rather than being a force for order and justice, the belief in “authority” is the archenemy of humanity.”

— Larken Rose

11. “In truth, the belief in “government” is a religion, made up of a set of dogmatic teachings, irrational doctrines which fly in the face of both evidence and logic, and which are methodically memorized and repeated by the faithful. Like other religions, the gospel of “government” describes a superhuman, supernatural entity, above mere mortals, which issues commandments to the peasantry, for whom unquestioning obedience is a moral imperative.”

— Larken Rose

12. “Political elections are not about togetherness, unity or tolerance; they are about arguing over how everyone should be forced to behave and what everyone should be forced to financially support, via the control machine called “government.”

— Larken Rose

13. “Everywhere you turn, be it the state or the church, the media or the schools, you are taught one thing above all else: the virtue of subjugating yourselves to mortals who claim to have the right to rule you.”

— Larken Rose

14. “But in practice, “left” and “right” politicians all engage in wealth redistribution, war-mongering, centralized control of commerce, and numerous coercive restrictions upon the behavior of their subjects. As “rightwing” and “leftwing” states approach complete power, they become utterly indistinguishable from each other.”

— Larken Rose

15. “But if you’re not allowed to defend your rights, by force if necessary, then they aren’t rights at all. If it’s up to government to decide what rights we have, then we have no rights at all. You might as well ask a carjacker whether you have the right to keep your own car.”

— Larken Rose

16. “True freedom and self-ownership is the simplest, most self-evident thing in the world. It’s so obvious that people have to be constantly trained to not see it. It’s the belief in authority that depends upon mental gymnastics, ignoring obvious contradictions, and engaging in ridiculously complex and convoluted rationalizations, to try to justify one group of people ruling another.”

— Larken Rose

17. “Being allowed to choose between the political “left” and the political “right” provides the people with exactly as much power and freedom as allowing them to choose between death by hanging and death by firing squad.”

— Larken Rose

18. “Despite the constant authoritarian propaganda claiming otherwise, having respect for “authority” and having respect for humanity are mutually exclusive and diametrically opposed.”

— Larken Rose

19. “Ironically, atheists are often quick to point out the destruction that has been committed throughout history in the name of religion, but fail to notice the gruesome results of the god they bow to: “government.”

— Larken Rose

20. “If, on the other hand, you value peaceful coexistence, compassion and cooperation, freedom and justice, then teach your children the principle of self ownership, teach them to respect the rights of every human being, and teach them to recognize and reject the belief in “authority” for what it is: the most irrational, self-contradictory, antihuman, evil, destructive and dangerous superstition the world has ever known.”

— Larken Rose

21. “No political ritual can alter morality. No election can make an evil act into a good act. If it is bad for you to do something, then it is bad for those in “government” to do it.”

— Larken Rose

22. “On the contrary, being a moral person requires taking on the personal responsibility of judging right from wrong and following one’s own conscience, the opposite of respecting and obeying “authority.”

— Larken Rose

23. “You are not Christians. You are not Jews. You are not Muslims. And you certainly aren’t atheists. You all have the same god, and its name is ‘government.’ You’re all members of the most evil, insane, destructive cult in history. If there ever was a devil, the state is it. And you worship it with all your heart and soul.”

— Larken Rose

24. “People who consider themselves educated, open-minded and progressive do not want to think of themselves as the slaves of a master, or even the subjects of a ruling class. Because of this, much rationalizing and obfuscating has been done in an attempt to deny the fundamental nature of “government” as a ruling class.”

— Larken Rose

25. “When the people recognize and accept no master, they will have no master. Ultimately, their bondage, and the means to escape it, exists entirely inside their own minds.”

— Larken Rose

26. “When enough people understand reality, tyrants can literally be ignored out of existence. They can’t ever be voted out of existence.”

— Larken Rose

27. “To be blunt, the belief in “authority” serves as a mental crutch for people seeking to escape the responsibility involved with being a thinking human being. It is an attempt to pass off the responsibility for decision-making to someone else: those claiming to have “authority.”

— Larken Rose

28. “If everyone has the right to use inherently righteous force, and “government” agents are allowed to use “force” in other situations as well, then, by its very nature, what “government” adds to society is immoral violence.”

— Larken Rose

29. “In short, “law enforcers” are trained to be oppressive megalomaniacs and to treat everyone else as cattle. And, human nature being what it is, anyone who routinely treats others that way – the way “law enforcers” are required to treat everyone else – will learn to despise others and treat them with contempt, disrespect and hostility. However good or bad at heart an individual is to begin with, the way to bring out the worst in him is to give him “authority” over others.”

— Larken Rose

30. “The “left” and “right” are merely two masks which the one ruling class wears, and making a new mask which is a compromise between the other two will have no effect whatsoever upon the nature of the beast or the destruction it causes.”

— Larken Rose

31. “The belief in “government” is not based on reason; it is based on faith.”

— Larken Rose

32. “To argue that human beings need to have a rightful ruler, one with the moral right to forcibly control all others, and one whom all others are obligated to obey, does not change the fact that there is no such thing, and can be no such thing.”

— Larken Rose

33. “In fact, those who lobby for politicians to respect any of the people’s “unalienable rights” do not believe in unalienable rights at all. Rights which require “government” approval are not unalienable, and are not even rights.”

— Larken Rose

34. “Many have been able to recognize and oppose specific acts of tyranny by specific regimes, but very few have recognized that the underlying problem is not who sits on the throne; the problem is that there is a throne to sit on.”

— Larken Rose

35. “The entire notion of “a government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” while it makes nice feel-good political rhetoric, is a logical impossibility. A ruling class cannot serve or represent those it rules any more than a slave owner can serve or represent his slaves.”

— Larken Rose

36. “Anyone who actually believes in the principle of non-aggression – the underlying premise of libertarianism – must be an anarchist, as it is logically impossible to oppose the initiation of violence while supporting any form of “government,” which is nothing but violence.”

— Larken Rose

37. “Your actions are always determined entirely by your own judgment, and your own choices. To try to attribute your behavior to some outside force, such as “authority,” is cowardly and dishonest. You made the choice, and you are responsible. Even if you just stupidly obeyed some self-proclaimed “authority,” you decided to do that.”

— Larken Rose

38. “The bravest thing you’ll ever do is walk into a booth every few years, where no one can see you, and press a button, to say which of two slave-masters you’d rather be owned by.”

— Larken Rose

39. “Frederick Douglass, a former slave, witnessed and described that exact phenomenon among his fellow slaves, many of whom were proud of how hard they worked for their masters and how faithfully they did as they were told. From their perspective, a runaway slave was a shameful thief, having “stolen” himself from the master.”

— Larken Rose

40. “The alleged right to rule, in any degree and in any form, is the opposite of humanity. The initiation of violence is the opposite of harmonious coexistence. The desire for dominion is the opposite of love for mankind. Hiding the violence under layers of complex rituals and self-contradictory rationalizations, and labeling brute thuggery as virtue and compassion, does not change that fact.”

— Larken Rose

41. “Ultimately, it is the belief in “authority” among the victims of oppression, even more than the beliefs of the ruling class and their enforcers, which allows tyranny, and man’s inhumanity to man, to continue on such a large scale.”

— Larken Rose

42. “When confronted with the idea that it is wrong for them to be forcibly deprived of the fruits of their labor, even if it is done “legally,” such people often vehemently defend those who continue to rob them, insisting that such robbery is essential to human civilization.”

— Larken Rose

43. “Unthinking adherence to any “authority” constitutes the greatest betrayal to humanity that there could possibly be, as it seeks to discard the free will and individual judgment that make us human and make us capable of morality, in favor of blind obedience, which reduces human beings to irresponsible robots.”

— Larken Rose

44. “Note the drastic contrast between the usual connotations of those terms – “anarchy” sounding scary and violent, “law and order” sounding civilized and just – and the real-world results of following conscience versus following rulers. The level of evil committed by individuals acting on their own is completely dwarfed by the level of evil committed by people obeying a perceived “authority.”

— Larken Rose

45. “The only thing that “law” and “government” are needed for is to attempt to legitimize immoral force. And that is exactly what “government” adds, and the only thing it adds, to society: more inherently unjust violence. No one who understands this simple truth would ever claim that “government” is essential to human civilization.”

— Larken Rose

46. “Every person who claims to act on behalf of “authority” is demonstrating that he has accepted an utterly ridiculous lie: that his position, his badge, his office dramatically changes what behaviors are moral and what behaviors are immoral. The idea is patently insane, but is rarely recognized as such because even the victims of the enforcers share in this delusion.”

— Larken Rose

47. “The “lawmakers” give the commands, but it is their faithful enforcers who carry them out. Millions upon millions of otherwise decent, civilized people spend day after day harassing, threatening, extorting, controlling and otherwise oppressing others who have not harmed or threatened anyone.”

— Larken Rose

48. “Mortals cannot alter morality any more than they can alter the laws of mathematics. Their understanding of something may change, but they cannot, by decree, change the nature of the universe. Nor would anyone sane attempt to. Yet that is what every new “law” passed by politicians pretends to be: a change in what constitutes moral behavior.”

— Larken Rose

49. “Just as everyone in a tribe praying to a volcano god would reinforce the idea that there is a volcano god, so begging politicians for favors reinforces the idea that there is a rightful ruling class, that their commands are “law,” and that obedience to such “laws” is a moral imperative.”

— Larken Rose

50. “Targeting “governments,” instead of their loyal enforcers, would serve humanity wonderfully, not only ending most violent conflicts a lot more quickly but creating a huge deterrent to any megalomaniac tempted to start conflicts in the first place. Yet there is an open, mutual, standing agreement between most high-level tyrants that, while it is okay to play games with the lives of their subjects, they will rarely target each other.”

— Larken Rose