Quotes from Ludwig von Mises

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

The standard of living of the common man is higher in those countries which have the greatest number of wealthy entrepreneurs.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Changes in human conditions are brought about by the pioneering of the cleverest and most energetic men. They take the lead and the rest of mankind follows them little by little.

It is evident that youth is the first victim of the trend toward bureaucratization. The young men are deprived of any opportunity to shape their own fate.

This, then, is freedom in the external life of man-that he is independent of the arbitrary power of his fellows.

The uncouth hordes of common men are not fit to recognize duly the merits of those who eclipse their own wretchedness.

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

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

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

Civilization is a work of peaceful co-operation.

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

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

It is the consumers who make poor people rich and rich people poor.

The attainment of the economic aims of man presupposes peace.

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

Whoever wishes peace among peoples must fight statism.

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

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

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