Ludwig von Mises quotes
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The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
[E]conomic history is a long record of government policies that failed because they were designed with a bold disregard for the laws of economics
-- Ludwig von Mises -
The main political problem is how to prevent the police power from becoming tyrannical. This is the meaning of all the struggles for liberty.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
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The root of the evil is not the construction of new, more dreadful weapons. It is the spirit of conquest.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Whoever wishes peace among peoples must fight statism.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Socialism is not an alternative to capitalism; it is an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
To the grumbler who complains about the unfairness of the market system only one piece of advice can be given: If you want to acquire wealth, then try to satisfy the public by offering them something that is cheaper or which they like better....Equality under the law gives you the power to challenge every millionaire.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
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Depressions and mass unemployment are not caused by the free market but by government interference in the economy.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Innovators and creative geniuses cannot be reared in schools. They are precisely the men who defy what the school has taught them.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
A society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not choose between two social systems; it chooses between social cooperation and the disintegration of society. Socialism is not an alternative to capitalism; it is an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Inequality of wealth and incomes is an essential feature of the market economy. It is the implement that makes the consumers supreme in giving them the power to force all those engaged in production to comply with their orders. It forces all those engaged in production to the utmost exertion in the service of the consumers. It makes competition work. He who best serves the consumers profits most and accumulates riches.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
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The unpopularity of economics is the result of its analysis of the effects of privileges. It is impossible to invalidate the economists demonstration that all privileges hurt the interests of the rest of the nation or at least a great part of it.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
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 -
Government spending cannot create additional jobs. If the government provides the funds required (think stimulus) by taxing the citizens or by borrowing from the public, it abolishes on the one hand as many jobs as it creates on the other.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Capitalism and socialism are two distinct patterns of social organization. Private control of the means of production and public control are contradictory notions and not merely contrary notions. There is no such thing as a mixed economy, a system that would stand midway between capitalism and socialism.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
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If one rejects laissez faire on account of mans fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Capitalism needs neither propaganda nor apostles. Its achievements speak for themselves. Capitalism delivers the goods.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Only stilted pedants can conceive the idea that there are absolute norms to tell what is beautiful and what is not. They try to derive from the works of the past a code of rules with which, as they fancy, the writers and artists of the future should comply. But the genius does not cooperate with the pundit.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
There is, in fact, only one solution: the state, the government, the laws must not in any way concern themselves with schooling or education. Public funds must not be used for such purposes. The rearing and instruction of youth must be left entirely to parents and to private associations and institutions
-- Ludwig von Mises -
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The so-called liberals of today have the very popular idea that freedom of speech, of thought, of the press, freedom of religion, freedom from imprisonment without trial-that all these freedoms can be preserved in the absence of what is called economic freedom. They do not realize that, in a system where there is no market, where the government directs everything, all those other freedoms are illusory, even if they are made into laws and written up in constitutions.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Whoever wants peace among nations must seek to limit the state and its influence most strictly.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
A citizen who casts his ballot without having to the best of his abilities studied as much economics as he can fails in his civic duties.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
The philosophy of protectionism is a philosophy of war.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
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Liberty is meaningless if it is only the liberty to agree with those in power.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Society has arisen out of the works of peace; the essence of society is peacemaking. Peace and not war is the father of all things.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
All attempts to coerce the living will of human beings into the service of something they do not want must fail
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Manufacturing and commercial monopolies owe their origin not to a tendency imminent in a capitalist economy but to governmental interventionist policy directed against free trade and laissez faire.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
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It has always been the task of the new generation to provoke changes.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Laissez faire does not mean: let soulless mechanical forces operate. It means: let individuals choose how they want to cooperate in the social division of labor and let them determine what the entrepreneurs should produce.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Public works are not accomplished by the miraculous power of a magic wand. They are paid for by funds taken away from the citizens.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
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The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Economic knowledge necessarily leads to liberalism
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Progressive taxation of income and profits means that precisely those parts of the income which people would have saved and invested are taxed away
-- Ludwig von Mises -
For it is an essential difference between capitalist and socialist production that under capitalism men provide for themselves, while under Socialism they are provided for.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
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The real bosses in the capitalist system of market economy are the consumers. They by their buying and by their abstention from buying decide who should own the capital and run the plants. They determine what should be produced and in what quantity and quality. Their attitudes result either in profit or in loss for the enterpriser. They make poor men rich and rich men poor. They are no easy bosses.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
No people and no part of a people shall be held against its will in a political association that it does not want.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Rulers do not like to admit that their power is restricted by any laws other than those of physics and biology. They never ascribe their failures and frustrations to the violation of economic law.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Human civilization is not something achieved against nature; it is rather the outcome of the working of the innate qualities of man.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
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Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
The desire for an increase of wealth can be satisfied through exchange, which is the only method possible in a capitalist economy, or by violence and petition as in a militarist society, where the strong acquire by force, the weak by petitioning.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Mankind does not drink alcohol because there are breweries, distilleries, and vineyards; men brew beer, distill spirits, and grow grapes because of the demand for alcoholic drinks.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
The issue is always the same: the government or the market. There is no third solution.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
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If men do not now succeed in abolishing war, civilization and mankind are doomed.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Continued adherence to a policy of compulsory education is utterly incompatible with efforts to establish lasting peace.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Only one thing can conquer war-that attitude of mind which can see nothing in war but destruction and annihilation...
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Civilization is a work of peaceful co-operation.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
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No very deep knowledge of economics is usually needed for grasping the immediate effects of a measure; but the task of economics is to foretell the remoter effects, and so to allow us to avoid such acts as attempt to remedy a present ill by sowing the seeds of a much greater ill for the future.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
The real bosses, in the capitalist system of market economy, are the consumers.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
The program of classical liberalism, condensed into a single word, would have to read: property.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Used to the conditions of a capitalistic environment, the average American takes it for granted that every year business makes something new and better accessible to him. Looking backward upon the years of his own life, he realizes that many implements that were totally unknown in the days of his youth and many others which at that time could be enjoyed only by a small minority are now standard equipment of almost every household.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
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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 governments.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
The interventionists do not approach the study of economic matters with scientific disinterestedness. Most of them are driven by an envious resentment against those whose incomes are larger than their own. This bias makes it impossible for them to see things as they really are. For them the main thing is not to improve the conditions of the masses, but to harm the entrepreneurs and capitalists even if this policy victimizes the immense majority of the people.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Economics is not about things and tangible material objects; it is about men, their meanings and actions.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
The study of economics has been again and again led astray by the vain idea that economics must proceed according to the pattern of other sciences.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
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The luxury of today is the necessity of tomorrow. Every advance first comes into being as the luxury of a few rich people, only to become, after a time, an indispensable necessity taken for granted by everyone. Luxury consumption provides industry with the stimulus to discover and introduce new, things. It is one of the dynamic factors in our economy. To it we owe the progressive innovations by which the standard of living of all strata of the population has been gradually raised.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
True, governments can reduce the rate of interest in the short run. They can issue additional paper money. They can open the way to credit expansion by the banks. They can thus create an artificial boom and the appearance of prosperity. But such a boom is bound to collapse soon or late and to bring about a depression.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
In the bureaucratic machine of socialism the way toward promotion is not achievement but the favor of the superiors.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
The most serious dangers for American freedom and the American way of life do not come from without.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
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If the practice persists of covering government deficits with the issue of notes, then the day will come without fail, sooner or later, when the monetary systems of those nations pursuing this course will break down completely. The purchasing power of the monetary unit will decline more and more, until finally it disappears completely.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
The continued existence of society depends upon private property.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
State interference in economic life, which calls itself economic policy, has done nothing but destroy economic life. Prohibitions and regulations have by their general obstructive tendency fostered the growth of the spirit of wastefulness.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Those fighting for free enterprise and free competition do not defend the interests of those rich today. They want a free hand left to unknown men who will be the entrepreneurs of tomorrow...
-- Ludwig von Mises -
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If history could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
The struggle for freedom is not the struggle of the many against the few, but of minorities, sometimes of a minority of but one man gainst the majority.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Most of us have no sympathy with the rich idler who spends his life in pleasure without ever doing any work. But even he fulfills a function in the life of the social organism. He sets an example of luxury that awakens in the multitude a consciousness of new needs and gives industry the incentive to fulfill them.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
The final outcome of the credit expansion is general impoverishment.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
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It is vain to fight totalitarianism by adopting totalitarian methods. Freedom can only be won by men unconditionally committed to the principles of freedom. The first requisite for a better social order is the return to unrestricted freedom of thought and speech.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
The flowering of human society depends on two factors: the intellectual power of outstanding men to conceive sound social and economic theories, and the ability of these or other men to make these ideologies palatable to the majority.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
The alcoholic and the drug addict harm only themselves by their behavior; the person who violates the rules of morality governing mans life in society harms not only himself, but everyone.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
All people, however fanatical they may be in their zeal to disparage and to fight capitalism, implicitly pay homage to it by passionately clamoring for the products it turns out
-- Ludwig von Mises -
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Many who are self-taught far excel the doctors, masters, and bachelors of the most renowned universities.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Spontaneous actions of individuals, aiming at nothing else than at the improvement of their own state of satisfaction, undermined the prestige of the coercive status system step by step.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Economic control is not merely control of a sector of human life that can be separated from the rest; it is the control of the means for all our ends.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Nobody ever recommended a dictatorship aiming at ends other than those he himself approved. He who advocates dictatorship always advocates the unrestricted rule of his own will
-- Ludwig von Mises -
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The Marxians love of democratic institutions was a stratagem only, a pious fraud for the deception of the masses. Within a socialist community there is no room left for freedom.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
If some peoples pretend that history or geography gives them the right to subjugate other races, nations, or peoples, there can be no peace.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Resentment is at work when one so hates somebody for his more favorable circumstances that one is prepared to bear heavy losses if only the hated one might also come to harm. Many of those who attack capitalism know very well that their situation under any other economic system will be less favorable.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Sovereignty must not be used for inflicting harm on anyone, whether citizen or foreigner.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
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To defeat the aggressors is not enough to make peace durable. The main thing is to discard the ideology that generates war.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
It is impossible to understand the history of economic thought if one does not pay attention to the fact that economics as such is a challenge to the conceit of those in power.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
What economic calculation requires is a monetary system whose functioning is not sabotaged by government interference.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
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Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping toward destruction. Therefore, everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interest of everyone hangs on the result. Whether he chooses or not, every man is drawn into the great historical struggle, the decisive battle into which our epoch has plunged us.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Both force and money are impotent against ideas.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Capitalism means free enterprise, sovereignty of the consumers in economic matters, and sovereignty of the voters in political matters. Socialism means full government control of every sphere of the individuals life and the unrestricted supremacy of the government in its capacity as central board of production management.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
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Tyranny is the political corollary of socialism, as representative government is the political corollary of the market economy.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Liberalism and capitalism address themselves to the cool, well-balanced mind. They proceed by strict logic, eliminating any appeal to the emotions. Socialism, on the contrary, works on the emotions, tries to violate logical considerations by rousing a sense of personal interest and to stifle the voice of reason by awakening primitive instincts.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
The salesman thanks the customer for patronizing his shop and asks him to come again. But the socialists say: Be grateful to Hitler, render thanks to Stalin; be nice and submissive, then the great man will be kind to you later too.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
There is simply no other choice than this: either to abstain from interference in the free play of the market, or to delegate the entire management of production and distribution to the government. Either capitalism or socialism: there exists no middle way.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
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Economics must not be relegated to classrooms and statistical offices and must not be left to esoteric circles. It is the philosophy of human life and action and concerns everybody and everything. It is the pith of civilization and of man's human existence.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Continued inflation inevitably leads to catastrophe.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
What pushes the masses into the camp of socialism is, even more than the illusion that socialism will make them richer, the expectation that it will curb all those who are better than they themselves are.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Some experts have declared that it is necessary to tax the people until it hurts. I disagree with these sadists.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
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History has witnessed the failure of many endeavors to impose peace by war, cooperation by coercion, unanimity by slaughtering dissidents.... A lasting order cannot be established by bayonets.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Government is essentially the negation of liberty.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
Credit expansion is the governments' foremost tool in their struggle against the market economy. In their hands it is the magic wand designed to conjure away the scarcity of capital goods, to lower the rate of interest or to abolish it altogether, to finance lavish government spending, to expropriate the capitalists, to contrive everlasting booms, and to make everybody prosperous.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
The main achievement of economics is that it has provided a theory of peaceful human cooperation. This is why the harbingers of violent conflict have branded it as a dismal science and why this age of wars, civil wars, and destruction has no use for it.
-- Ludwig von Mises -
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