Top 574 Quotes & Sayings by 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.

Economically considered, war and revolution are always bad business.

Only one thing can conquer war - that attitude of mind which can see nothing in war but destruction and annihilation.

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

Peace and not war is the father of all things.

A lasting order cannot be established by bayonets.

Society has arisen out of the works of peace; the essence of society is peacemaking.

War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings.

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

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.

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

The attainment of the economic aims of man presupposes peace.

Innovation is the whim of an elite before it becomes a need of the public.

Modern society, based as it is on the division of labor, can be preserved only under conditions of lasting peace.

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

To defeat the aggressors is not enough to make peace durable. The main thing is to discard the ideology that generates war.

Men are fighting... because they are convinced that the extermination of adversaries is the only means of promoting their own well-being.

The philosophy of protectionism is a philosophy of war.

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

War... is harmful, not only to the conquered but to the conqueror.

Wars of aggression are popular nowadays with those nations convinced that only victory and conquest could improve their material well-being.

If men do not now succeed in abolishing war, civilization and mankind are doomed.

If history could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization.

Whoever wishes peace among peoples must fight statism.

War can really cause no economic boom, at least not directly, since an increase in wealth never does result from destruction of goods.

Whoever wants peace among nations must seek to limit the state and its influence most strictly.

It is untrue that some are poor because others are rich. If an order of society in which incomes were equal replaced the capitalist order, everyone would become poorer.

The gold standard did not collapse. Governments abolished it in order to pave the way for inflation. The whole grim apparatus of oppression and coercion, policemen, customs guards, penal courts, prisons, in some countries even executioners, had to be put into action in order to destroy the gold standard.

No matter how efficient school training may be, it would only produce stagnation, orthodoxy, and rigid pedantry if there were no uncommon men pushing forward beyond the wisdom of their tutors.

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.

Private property creates for the individual a sphere in which he is free of the state. It sets limits to the operation of the authoritarian will.

Political ideas that have dominated the public mind for decades cannot be refuted through rational arguments. They must run their course in life and cannot collapse otherwise than in great catastrophe.

Every restriction of trade creates vested interests that are from then on opposed to its removal.

The struggle for freedom is ultimately not resistance to autocrats or oligarchs but resistance to the despotism of public opinion.

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

Government is the only institution that can take a valuable commodity like paper, and make it worthless by applying ink.

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

The market and its inescapable law are supreme.

Every socialist is a disguised dictator.

Under a socialist mode of production all personal incentives which selfishness provides under capitalism are removed, and a premium is put upon laziness and negligence. Whereas in a capitalist society selfishness incites everyone to the utmost diligence, in a socialist society it makes for inertia and laxity.

There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.

The most important thing to remember is that inflation is not an act of God, that inflation is not a catastrophe of the elements or a disease that comes like the plague. Inflation is a policy.

A nation cannot prosper if its members are not fully aware of the fact that what alone can improve their condition s is more and better production. And this can only be brought about by increased saving and capital accumulation.

What counts alone is the innovator, the dissenter, the harbinger of things unheard of, the man who rejects the traditional standards and aims at substituting new values and ideas for old ones.

Private property creates for the individual a sphere in which he is free of the state. It sets limits to the operation of the authoritarian will. It allows other forces to arise side by side with and in opposition to political power. It thus becomes the basis of all those activities that are free from violent interference on the part of the state. It is the soil in which the seeds of freedom are nurtured and in which the autonomy of the individual and ultimately all intellectual and material progress are rooted.

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!

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.

As soon as we surrender the principle that the state should not interfere in any questions touching on the individuals mode of life, we end by regulating and restricting the latter down to the smallest details.

A higher standard of living also brings about a higher standard of culture and civilization.

The masses do not like those who surpass them in any regard. The average man envies and hates those who are different.

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.

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.

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

where Nietzsche's response to the equation of socialism and morality was to question the value of morality, at least as it had been customarily understood, economists like Mises and Hayek pursued a different path, one Nietzsche would never have dared to take: they made the market the very expression of morality.

The main propoganda trick of supporters of the allegedly "progressive" policy of government control is to blame capitalism for all that is unsatisfactory in present-day conditions and to extol the blessings of socialism. They have never attempted to prove their fallacious dogmas, all they did was to call their adversaries names and cast suspicion upon their motives. And, unfortunately, the average citizen cannot see through these stratagems. The liars must be afraid of the truth and are therefore driven to suppress its pronouncement.

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

The middle-of-the-road policy is not an economic system that can last. It is a method for the realization of socialism by installments.

The advocates of public control cannot do without inflation. They need it in order to finance their policy of reckless spending and of lavishly subsidizing and bribing the voters.

Socialism is not in the least what it pretends to be. It is not the pioneer of a better and finer world, but the spoiler of what thousands of years of civilization have created. It does not build, it destroys. For destruction is the essence of it. It produces nothing, it only consumes what the social order based on private ownership in the means of production has created.

Liberty is always freedom from the government.