Ludwig Von Mises Quotes

Profits are the driving force of the market economy. The greater the profits, the better the needs of the consumers are supplied... He who serves the public best, makes the highest profits.

Whoever prefers life to death, happiness to suffering, well-being to misery must defend without compromise private ownership in the means of production.

Unemployment doles can have no other effect than the perpetuation of unemployment.

Some think that they will exercise power for the general good, but that is what all those with power have believed. Power is evil in itself, regardless of who exercises it.

The elimination of profit, whatever methods may be resorted to for its execution, must transform society into a senseless jumble. It would create poverty for all.

Many who are self-taught far excel the doctors, masters, and bachelors of the most renowned universities.

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

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.

The masses, in their capacity as consumers, ultimately determine everybody's revenues and wealth.

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

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.

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

A wealthy man can preserve his wealth only by continuing to serve the consumers in the most efficient way.

Every step toward the elimination of profit is progress on the way toward social disintegration.

German Marxian's coined the dictum: If socialism is against human nature, then human nature must be changed.

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

The common man is the sovereign consumer whose buying or abstention from buying ultimately determines what should be produced and in what quantity and quality.

There is no western, capitalistic country in which the conditions of the masses have not improved in an unprecedented way.

Public works are not accomplished by the miraculous power of a magic wand. They are paid for by funds taken away from the citizens.

Big business always serve - directly or indirectly - the masses.

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.

What pays under capitalism is satisfying the common man, the customer. The more people you satisfy, the better for you.

It is inherent in the nature of the capitalistic economy that, in the final analysis, the employment of the factors of production is aimed only toward serving the wishes of consumers.

What is a loophole? If the law does not punish a definite action or does not tax a definite thing, this is not a loophole. It is simply the law.

The truth is that most people lack the intellectual ability and courage to resist a popular movement, however pernicious and ill-considered.

Continued inflation inevitably leads to catastrophe.

Neither the entrepreneurs nor the farmers nor the capitalists determine what has to be produced. The consumers do that.

There is no remedy for the inefficiency of public management.

Under capitalism everybody provides for their own needs by serving others.

Human civilization is not something achieved against nature; it is rather the outcome of the working of the innate qualities of man.

Those who satisfy the wants of a smaller number of people only collect fewer votes-dollars-than those who satisfy the wants of more people.

[T]he essence of so-called war prosperity: it enriches some by what it takes from others. It is not rising wealth but a shifting of wealth and income.

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.

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

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

The whole of mankind's progress has had to be achieved against the resistance and opposition of the state and its power of coercion.

The boom is called good business, prosperity, and upswing. Its unavoidable aftermath, the readjustment of conditions to the real data of the market, is called crisis, slump, bad business, depression.

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

The concept of a 'just' or 'fair' price is devoid of any scientific meaning; it is a disguise for wishes, a striving for a state of affairs different from reality.

To assign to everybody his proper place in society is the task of the consumers. Their buying and abstention from buying is instrumental in determining each individual's social position.

It is impossible to describe any human action if one does not refer to the meaning the actor sees in the stimulus as well as in the end his response is aiming at.

The sharper the competition, the better it serves its social function to improve economic production.

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.

The development of capitalism consists in everyone having the right to serve the consumer better or more cheaply.

The meaning of economic freedom is this: that the individual is in a position to choose the way in which he wants to integrate himself into the totality of society.

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.

In the capitalist society there is a place and bread for all. Its ability to expand provides sustenance for every worker. Permanent unemployment is not a feature of free capitalism.

The market economy as such does not respect political frontiers. Its field is the world.

Economic theory has demonstrated in an irrefutable way that a prosperity created by an expansionist monetary and credit policy is illusory and must end in a slump, an economic crisis.

Professor von Mises has a splendid analytical mind and an admirable passion for liberty; but as a student of human nature he is worse than null and as a debater he is of Hyde Park standard.