Quotes About Mises

As Ludwig von Mises conclusively demonstrated in 1912, money does not and cannot originate by order of the State or by some sort of social contract agreed upon by all citizens; it must always originate in the processes of the free market.

Against what is stupid, nonsensical, erroneous, and evil, [classical] liberalism fights with the weapons of the mind, and not with brute force and repression.

The philosophy commonly called individualism is a philosophy of social cooperation and the progressive intensification of the social nexus.

But Hayek is also one of the handful of social scientists who (along with his teacher Ludwig von Mises) demonstrated more than sixty years ago why the socialist system could not work and, thus, why it would eventually collapse, as it did in 1989.

We can anticipate Mises's ultimate conclusion: There is no viable third system. People must choose between capitalism and socialism.

Like all who inherit the Lockean tradition, Mises believed that a strong but limited government, far from suffocating its citizens, allows them to be productive and free.

As Mises wrote in 1919, "one can say without exaggeration that inflation is an indispensable means of militarism. Without it, the repercussions of war on welfare become obvious much more quickly and penetratingly; war weariness would set in much earlier.

Mises's conclusion: "Whosoever foresees so clearly before the age of forty the disaster and the destruction of everything he deems of value, cannot escape pessimism and psychic depression.

Both Mises and Rothbard have passed away, but their outlook—including Ph.D.s who subscribe to it—lives on in the Ludwig von Mises Institute. But groups like these have basically given up on mainstream economics; members mostly talk to each other and publish in their own journals. The closest thing to market fundamentalists are not merely outside the mainstream of the economics profession. They are way outside.

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

But, although the future is unknowable, it is not unimaginable. As Ludwig von Mises put it: "The entrepreneurial idea that carries on and brings profit is precisely that idea which did not occur to the majority. It is not correct foresight as such that yields profits, but foresight better than that of the rest. The prize goes only to the dissenters, who do not let themselves be misled by the errors accepted by the multitude."6

The Welfare State is merely a method for transforming the market economy step by step into socialism.

There is joint action, but no joint thinking. There is only tradition which preserves thoughts and communicates them to others as a stimulus to their thinking.

It suffices here to say that the planned economy which the advocates of dictatorship wish to set up is precisely as socialistic as the Socialism propagated by the self-styled Social Democrats.

Human thoughts about things of which neither pure reasoning nor experience provides any knowledge may differ so radically that no agreement can be reached.

But his much lauded doctrines are nothing but the fantasies of a man who was incapable of seeing clearly the world as it really is.

No better is the propensity, very popular nowadays, to brand supporters of other ideologies as lunatics. Psychiatrists

The "Keynesian revolution" took place long before Keynes approved of it and fabricated a pseudo-scientific justification for it. What he really did was to write an apology for the prevailing policies of governments.

the subjective theory of value

the relations between the equilibrium rate of interest and the money rate of interest, which will be dealt with in the Third Part of this book.

the Keynesian miracle fails to materialize; the stones do not turn into bread.

Tacitly underlying Marxian theory is the nebulous idea that the natural factors of production are such that they need not be economized.

The Marxians love of democratic institutions was a stratagem only, a pious fraud for the deception of the masses. Within a socialist community there is no room left for freedom.