Ludwig Von Mises Quotes

Innovators and creative geniuses cannot be reared in schools. They are precisely the men who defy what the school has taught them.

The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments.

[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

The real bosses, in the capitalist system of market economy, are the consumers.

Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer.

The root of the evil is not the construction of new, more dreadful weapons. It is the spirit of conquest.

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.

The main political problem is how to prevent the police power from becoming tyrannical. This is the meaning of all the struggles for liberty.

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.

Capitalism needs neither propaganda nor apostles. Its achievements speak for themselves. Capitalism delivers the goods.

The issue is always the same: the government or the market. There is no third solution.

Economic progress is the work of the savers, who accumulate capital, and of the entrepreneurs, who turn capital to new uses.

Depressions and mass unemployment are not caused by the free market but by government interference in the economy.

He who serves the public best, makes the highest profits.

Every socialist is a disguised dictator.

The entrepreneur profits to the extent he has succeeded in serving the consumers better than other people have done.

The only source from which an entrepreneurs profits stem is his ability to anticipate better than other people the future demand of the consumers.

The fundamental law of the market is: the customer is always right.

The fact is that, under a capitalistic system, the ultimate bosses are the consumers. The sovereign is not the state, it is the people.

The standard of living of the common man is higher in those countries which have the greatest number of wealthy entrepreneurs.

Freedom is indivisible. As soon as one starts to restrict it, one enters upon a decline on which it is difficult to stop.

No people and no part of a people shall be held against its will in a political association that it does not want.

The market is a democracy in which every penny gives a right to vote.

Liberty is meaningless if it is only the liberty to agree with those in power.

If some peoples pretend that history or geography gives them the right to subjugate other races, nations, or peoples, there can be no peace.

Economics is not about things and tangible material objects; it is about men, their meanings and actions.

Socialism is not an alternative to capitalism; it is an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings.

The prerequisite for more economic equality in the world is industrialization. And this is possible only through increased capital investment, increased capital accumulation.

Liberty is always freedom from the government.

In a battle between force and an idea, the latter always prevails.

Sovereignty must not be used for inflicting harm on anyone, whether citizen or foreigner.

Under capitalism everybody is the architect of his own fortune.

Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.

What mankind needs today is liberation from the rule of nonsensical slogans and a return to sound reasoning.

Capitalism gave the world what it needed, a higher standard of living for a steadily increasing number of people.

The idea that political freedom can be preserved in the absence of economic freedom, and vice versa, is an illusion. Political freedom is the corollary of economic freedom.

The philosophy of protectionism is a philosophy of war.

The final outcome of the credit expansion is general impoverishment.

Both force and money are impotent against ideas.

Depression is the aftermath of credit expansion.

Whoever wishes peace among peoples must fight statism.

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.

Taxing profits is tantamount to taxing success.

Society is best served when the means of production are in the possession of those who know how to use them best.

All rational action is in the first place individual action. Only the individual thinks. Only the individual reasons. Only the individual acts.

Every government intervention [in the marketplace] creates unintended consequences, which lead to calls for further government interventions.

Progressive taxation of income and profits means that precisely those parts of the income which people would have saved and invested are taxed away

What generates war is the economic philosophy of nationalism: embargoes, trade and foreign exchange controls, monetary devaluation, etc. The philosophy of protectionism is a philosophy of war.

The program of liberalism if condensed into a single word, would have to read: property, that is, private ownership of the means of production.

The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning.