Ludwig Von Mises Quotes

Fortunes cannot grow; someone has to increase them.

History can tell us what happened in the past. But it cannot assert that it must happen again in the future.

No private enterprise will ever fall prey to bureaucratic methods of management if it is operated with the sole aim of making profit.

The first socialists were the intellectuals; they, and not the masses, are the backbone of Socialism.

Progress is precisely that which rules and regulations did not foresee.

A short time ago the demagogues blamed capitalism for the poverty of the masses. Today they rather blame capitalism for the "affluence" that it bestows upon the common man.

Production is not something physical, material, and external; it is a spiritual and intellectual phenomenon.

There is no reason why capitalists and entrepreneurs should be ashamed of earning profits.

Our whole civilization rests on the fact that men have always succeeded in beating off the attack of the re-distributors.

Two hundred years ago, before the advent of capitalism, a man's social status was fixed from the beginning to the end of his life; he inherited it from his ancestors and it never changed.

Anarchism misunderstands the real nature of man. It would be practicable only in a world of angels and saints

The better an entrepreneur succeeds, the more is he vilified and themore is he soaked by taxation.

How pale is the art of sorcerers, witches, and conjurors when compared with that of the government's Treasury Department!

It is labor alone that is productive: it creates wealth and therewith lays the outward foundations for the inward flowering of man.

No one can escape the influence of a prevailing ideology.

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.

No one should expect that any logical argument or any experience could ever shake the almost religious fervor of those who believe in salvation through spending and credit expansion.

The supremacy of public opinion determines not only the singular role that economics occupies in the complex of thought and knowledge. It determines the whole process of human history.

Once the principle is admitted that it is the duty of the government to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments.

Freedom and liberty always mean freedom from police interference.

Every collectivist assumes a different source for the collective will, according to his own political, religious and national convictions.

Those who disagree with the dictator's plan have no other means to carry on than to defeat the despot by force of arms.

The mixing of politics and business not only is detrimental to politics, as is frequently observed, but even much more so to business.

We must fight all that we dislike in public life. We must substitute better ideas for wrong ideas.

If it is unnecessary to adjust the amount of expenditure to the means available, there is no limit to the spending of the great god State.

It is necessary to curb the power of government. This is the task of all constitutions, bills of rights and laws. This is the meaning of all struggles which men have fought for liberty.

It is indeed one of the principal drawbacks of every kind of interventionism that it is so difficult to reverse the process.

Not mythical material productive forces, but reason and ideas determine the course of human affairs. What is needed to stop the trend toward socialism and despotism is common-sense and moral courage.

The comparatively greater prosperity of the United States is an outcome of the fact that the New Deal did not come in 1900 or 1910, but only in 1933.

The inequality of income and fortunes is essential in capitalism.

Liberalism must be intolerant of every sort of intolerance.

Despots and democratic majorities are drunk with power.

There is no such thing as a just and fair method of exercising the tremendous power that interventionism puts into the hands of the legislature and the executive.

Seen from the point of view of the particular group interests of the bureaucrats, every measure that makes the government's payroll swell is progress.

There is no other planning for freedom and general welfare than to let the market system work.

You call it a 'loophole' when the government still allows you some freedom.

Where there is no market economy, the best intentioned provisions of constitutions and laws remain a dead letter.

Against what is stupid, nonsensical, erroneous, and evil, [classical] liberalism fights with the weapons of the mind, and not with brute force and repression.

The Welfare State is merely a method for transforming the market economy step by step into socialism.

Every innovation makes its appearance as a 'luxury' of the few well-to-do. After industry has become aware of it, the luxury then becomes a 'necessity' for all.

A genius is always a teacher, never a pupil; he is always self-made.

The market system makes all producers responsible to the consumer.

What governments call international monetary cooperation is concerted action for the sake of credit expansion.

Science does not give us absolute and final certainty. It only gives us assurance within the limits of our mental abilities and the prevailing state of scientific thought.

In talking about equality and asking vehemently for its realization, nobody advocates a curtailment of his own present income.

Nobody is in a position to decree what should make a fellow man happier.

The essence of Keynesianism is its complete failure to conceive the role that saving and capital accumulation play in the improvement of economic conditions.

The policies advocated by the welfare school remove the incentive to saving on the part of private citizens.

The average American worker enjoys amenities for which Croesus, Crassus, the Medici, and Louis XIV would have envied him.

As the science of economics...exploded the fallacies of every brand of utopianism, it was outlawed and stigmatized as unscientific.