Quotes from Ludwig von Mises

He who only wishes and hopes does not interfere actively with the course of events and with the shaping of his own destiny.

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

It is vain to fight totalitarianism by adopting totalitarian methods. Freedom can only be won by men unconditionally committed to the principles of freedom. The first requisite for a better social order is the return to unrestricted freedom of thought and speech.

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

It is not the fault of the entrepreneurs that the consumers, the people, the common man, prefer liquor to Bibles and detective stories to serious books, and that governments prefer guns to butter. The entrepreneur does not make greater profits in selling bad things than in selling good things. His profits are the greater the better he succeeds in providing the consumers with those things they ask for most intensely.

The alcoholic and the drug addict harm only themselves by their behavior; the person who violates the rules of morality governing mans life in society harms not only himself, but everyone.

Nobody ever recommended a dictatorship aiming at ends other than those he himself approved. He who advocates dictatorship always advocates the unrestricted rule of his own will

The average man is both better informed and less corruptible in the decisions he makes as a consumer than as a voter at political elections.

All people, however fanatical they may be in their zeal to disparage and to fight capitalism, implicitly pay homage to it by passionately clamoring for the products it turns out

Every step which leads from capitalism toward planning is necessarily a step nearer to absolutism and dictatorship.

A man who chooses between drinking a glass of milk and a glass of a solution of potassium cyanide does not choose between two beverages; he chooses between life and death. A society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not choose between two social systems; it chooses between social cooperation and the disintegration of society. Socialism is not an alternative to capitalism; it is an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings.

The worst thing that can happen to a socialist is to have his country ruled by socialists who are not his friends.

They [intellectuals] coined most of the slogans that guided the butcheries of Bolshevism, Fascism, and Nazism. Intellectuals extolling the delights of murder, writers advocating censorship, philosophers judging the merits of thinkers and authors, not according to the value of their contributions but according to their achievements on battlefields, are the spiritual leaders of our age of perpetual strife.

As a rule, capitalism is blamed for the undesired effects of a policy directed at its elimination. The man who sips his morning coffee does not say, "Capitalism has brought this beverage to my breakfast table." But when he reads in the papers that the government of Brazil has ordered part of the coffee crop destroyed, he does not say, "That is government for you"; he exclaims, "That is capitalism for you.

The market system is the basis of our civilization. Its only alternative is the Führer principle.

He who only wishes and hopes does not interfere actively with the course of events and with the shaping of his own destiny.

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

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.

All those evils which the [liberals] interpret as evidence of the failure of capitalism, are the necessary outcome of interference with the market.

What vitiates entirely the socialists economic critique of capitalism is their failure to grasp the sovereignty of the consumers in the market economy.

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.

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

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.

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.