Ludwig von Mises Quotes

232 Sourced Quotes

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

Ludwig von Mises
The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster.

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
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
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
Big business depends entirely on the patronage of those who buy its products: the biggest enterprises loses its power and its influence when it loses its customers.

Ludwig von Mises
You have the courage to tell the masses what no politician told them: you are inferior and all the improvements in your conditions which you simply take for granted you owe to the effort of men who are better than you. If this be arrogance, as some of your critics observed, it is still the truth that had to said in the age of the Welfare State.

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

Ludwig von Mises
Is still fulfilling its social function in supplying the consumers with more, better and cheaper goods.

Ludwig von Mises
Violent resistance against the power of the state is the last resort of the minority in its effort to break loose from the oppression of the majority.... The citizen must not be so narrowly circumscribed in his activities that, if he thinks differently from those in power, his only choice is either to perish or to destroy the machinery of state.

Ludwig von Mises
A free man must be able to endure it when his fellow men act and live otherwise than he considers proper. He must free himself from the habit, just as soon as something does not please him, of calling for the police.

Ludwig von Mises
If you increase the quantity of money, you bring about the lowering of the purchasing power of the monetary unit.

Ludwig von Mises
The superiority of the gold standard consists in the fact that the value of gold develops independent of political actions.

Ludwig von Mises
Permanent mass unemployment destroys the moral foundations of the social order. The young people, who, having finished their training for work, are forced to remain idle, are the ferment out of which the most radical political movements are formed. In their ranks the soldiers of the coming revolutions are recruited.

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
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
Scientific criticism has no nobler task than to shatter false beliefs.

Ludwig von Mises
History makes one wise, but not competent to solve concrete problems.

Ludwig von Mises
Capitalism is essentially a system of mass production for the satisfaction of the needs of the masses. It pours a horn of plenty upon the common man. It has raised the average standard of living to a height never dreamed of in earlier ages. It has made accessible to millions of people enjoyments which a few generations ago were only within the reach of a small élite.

Ludwig von Mises
All this talk: the state should do this or that, ultimately means: the police should force consumers to behave otherwise than they would behave spontaneously.

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
The policy of letting the free market determine the height of wage rates is the only reasonable and successful full-employment policy.

Ludwig von Mises
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!

Ludwig von Mises
If one regards inflation as an evil, then one has to stop inflating. One has to balance the budget of the government.

Ludwig von Mises
Western civilization is based upon the libertarian principle, and all its achievements are the results of the action of free men.

Ludwig von Mises