Ludwig Von Mises Quotes & Sayings

Not mythical material productive forces, but reason and ideas determine the course of human affairs. What is needed to stop the trend toward socialism and despotism is common-sense and moral courage. — Ludwig Von Mises

Economic history shows us a continual increase in the demand for money. The characteristic feature of the development of the demand for money is its intensification; the growth of division of labour and consequently of exchange transactions, which have constantly become more and more indirect and dependent on the use of money, have helped to bring this about, as well as the increase of population and prosperity. — Ludwig Von Mises

Mankind does not drink alcohol because there are breweries, distilleries, and vineyards; men brew beer, distill spirits, and grow grapes because of the demand for alcoholic drinks. — Ludwig Von Mises

Those politicians, professors and union bosses who curse big business are fighting for a lower standard of living. — Ludwig Von Mises

Nothing, however, is as ill founded as the assertion of the alleged equality of all members of the human race. — Ludwig Von Mises

The market and its inescapable law are supreme. — Ludwig Von Mises

If any of the socialist chiefs had tried to earn his living by selling hot dogs, he would have learned something about the sovereignty of the consumers. — Ludwig Von Mises

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

What matters is not the allocation of portions out of a fund presented to man by nature. The problem is rather to further those social institutions which enable people to continue and to enlarge the production of all those things which they need. — Ludwig Von Mises

Without exception all political parties promise their supporters a higher real income. There is no difference in this respect between nationalists and internationalists and between the supporters of a market economy and the advocates of either socialism or interventionism. If a party asks its supporters to make sacrifices for its cause, it always explains these sacrifices as the necessary temporary means for the attainment of the ultimate goal, the improvement of the material well-being of its members. Each party considers it as an insidious plot against its prestige and its survival if somebody ventures to question the capacity of its projects to make the group members more prosperous. Each party regards with a deadly hatred the economists embarking upon such a critique. — Ludwig Von Mises

If we live our lives as a gift it is possible to reach a blissful state of eternal happiness. It is those who live their life with a sense of entitlement that undermine peace , freedom and liberty. Know that every breath is a miracle and every moment a blessing and you will achieve your dreams. Planning other people's actions means to prevent them from planning for themselves, means to deprive them of their essentially human quality, means enslaving them. — Ludwig Von Mises

Money is not indefinitely divisible. Even with the assistance of money-substitutes for expressing fractional sums that for technical reasons cannot conveniently be expressed in the actual monetary material (a method that has been brought to perfection in the modern system of token coinage), it seems entirely impossible to provide commerce with every desired fraction of the monetary unit. — Ludwig Von Mises

The elimination of profit, whatever methods may be resorted to for its execution, must transform society into a senseless jumble. — Ludwig Von Mises

Capital is not a free gift of God or of nature. It is the outcome of a provident restriction of consumption on the part of man. It is created and increased by saving and maintained by the abstention from dissaving. — Ludwig Von Mises

Rulers do not like to admit that their power is restricted by any laws other than those of physics and biology. They never ascribe their failures and frustrations to the violation of economic law. — Ludwig Von Mises

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

Capitalism gave the world what it needed, a higher standard of living for a steadily increasing number of people. — Ludwig Von Mises

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

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. — Ludwig Von Mises

If one regards inflation as an evil, then one has to stop inflating. One has to balance the budget of the government. — Ludwig Von Mises

Only stilted pedants can conceive the idea that there are absolute norms to tell what is beautiful and what is not. They try to derive from the works of the past a code of rules with which, as they fancy, the writers and artists of the future should comply. But the genius does not cooperate with the pundit. — Ludwig Von Mises

There is an inherent tendency in all governmental power to recognize no restraints on its operation and to extend the sphere of its dominion as much as possible. To control everything, to leave no room for anything to happen of its own accord without the interference of the authorities
th is is the goal for which every ruler secretly strives. — Ludwig Von Mises

When, thirty-five years ago, I tried to give a summary of the ideas and principles of that social philosophy that was once known under the name of liberalism, I did not indulge in the vain hope that my account would prevent the impending catastrophes to which the policies adopted by the European nations were manifestly leading. All I wanted to achieve was to offer to the small minority of thoughtful people an opportunity to learn something about the aims of classical liberalism and its achievements and thus to pave the way for a resurrection of the spirit of freedom after the coming debacle. — Ludwig Von Mises

Public opinion takes no offense at the endeavors of farmers, workers, clerks, teachers, doctors, ministers, and people from many other callings to earn as much as they can. But it censures the capitalists and entrepreneurs for their greed. — Ludwig Von Mises

Government force is derived from the sum of the physical force each citizen could exert which by one citizen himself would be ineffective, but when summed from the force of all the area's citizens indeed composes a power no citizen or group can withstand. That force is then rightly but justly to be used against those who violate the foundation pillars of freedom. — Ludwig Von Mises

Aggressors cannot wage total war without introducing Socialism. — Ludwig Von Mises

Production is "anarchistic. — Ludwig Von Mises

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

Within the market society each serves all his fellow citizens and each is served by them. It is a system of mutual exchange of services and commodities, a mutual giving, and receiving. — Ludwig Von Mises

A variation in the objective exchange-value of money can arise only when a force is exerted in one direction that is not cancelled by a counteracting force in the opposite direction. If the causes that alter the ratio between the stock of money and the demand for it from the point of view of an individual consist merely in accidental and personal factors that concern that particular individual only, then, according to the law of large numbers, it is likely that the forces arising from this cause, and acting in both directions in the market, will counterbalance each other. — Ludwig Von Mises

For hundreds, even thousands, of years, people completely failed to see that variations in the objective exchange-value of money could be induced by monetary factors. They tried to explain all variations of prices exclusively from the commodity side. — Ludwig Von Mises

More dangerous than bayonets and cannon are the weapons of the mind. — Ludwig Von Mises

Laissez faire does not mean: let soulless mechanical forces operate. It means: let individuals choose how they want to cooperate in the social division of labor and let them determine what the entrepreneurs should produce. — Ludwig Von Mises

Catallactics does not ask whether or not the consumers are right, noble, generous, wise, moral, patriotic, or church-going. It is concerned not with why they act, but only with how they act. — Ludwig Von Mises

Government means always coercion and compulsion and is by necessity the opposite of liberty. Government is a guarantor of liberty and is compatible with liberty only if its range is adequately restricted to the preservation of economic freedom. Where there is no market economy, the best-intentioned provisions of constitutions and laws remain a dead letter. — Ludwig Von Mises

There is no means by which anyone can evade his personal responsibility. Whoever neglects to examine to the best of his abilities all the problems involved voluntarily surrenders his birthright to a selfappointed elite of supermen. In such vital matters blind reliance upon 'experts' and uncritical acceptance of popular catchwords and prejudices is tantamount to the abandonment of self-determination and to yielding to other people's domination. As conditions are today, nothing can be more important to every intelligent man than economics. His own fate and that of his progeny are at stake. — Ludwig Von Mises

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

When jurists and business men assert that the depreciation of money has a very great influence on all kinds of debt relations, that it makes all kinds of business more difficult, or even impossible, that it invariably leads to consequences that nobody desires and that everybody feels to be unjust, we naturally agree with them. In a social order that is entirely founded on the use of money and in which all accounting is done in terms of money, the destruction of the monetary system means nothing less than the destruction of the basis of all exchange. Nevertheless, this evil cannot be counteracted by ad hoc laws designed to remove the burden of the depreciation from single persons, or groups of persons, or classes of the community, — Ludwig Von Mises

What counts is not the data, but the mind that deals with
them. The data that Galileo, Newton, Ricardo, Menger, and
Freud made use of for their great discoveries lay at the disposal
of every one of their contemporaries and of untold previous
generations. Galileo was certainly not the first to observe the
swinging motion of the chandelier in the cathedral at Pisa. — Ludwig Von Mises

Socialist society is a society of officials. — Ludwig Von Mises

The attempt to restrain prices within limits has to be given up. A government that sets out to abolish market prices is inevitably driven towards the abolition of private property. — Ludwig Von Mises

A famous, very often quoted phrase says: "That government is best, which governs least." I do not believe this to be a correct description of of the functions of a good government. Government ought to do all the things for which it is needed and for which it is established. Government ought to protect the individuals within the country against the violent and fraudulent attacks of gangsters, and it should defend the country against foreign enemies. These are the functions of government within a free system, within the system of the market economy. — Ludwig Von Mises

The egalitarian doctrine is manifestly contrary to all the facts established by biology and by history. Only fanatical partisans of this theory can contend that what distinguishes the genius from the dullard is entirely the effect of postnatal influences. — Ludwig Von Mises

Adept as he was in the Hegelian dialectic - a system easy of abuse by those who seek to dominate thought by arbitrary flights of fancy and metaphysical verbosity - he was not slow in finding a way out of the dilemma in which socialists found themselves. — Ludwig Von Mises

If people do not consume their whole incomes, the non-consumed surplus can be invested, it increases the amount of capital goods available and thereby makes it possible to embark upon projects which could not be executed before. — Ludwig Von Mises

By rendering their enterprises profitable, the consumers shift control of the factors of production into the hands of those businessmen who serve them best. By rendering the enterprises of the bungling entrepreneurs unprofitable, they withdraw control from those entrepreneurs with whose services they disagree. It is antisocial in the strict meaning of the term if governments thwart these decisions of the people by taxing profits. From a genuinely social point of view, it would be more "social" to tax losses than to tax profits. — Ludwig Von Mises

Whether we like it or not, it is a fact that economics cannot remain an esoteric branch of knowledge accessible only to small groups of scholars and specialists. Economics deals with society's fundamental problems; it concerns everyone and belongs to all. It is the main and proper study of every citizen. — Ludwig Von Mises

To the grumbler who complains about the unfairness of the market system only one piece of advice can be given: If you want to acquire wealth, then try to satisfy the public by offering them something that is cheaper or which they like better ... Equality under the law gives you the power to challenge every millionaire. — Ludwig Von Mises

Interventionism cannot be considered as an economic system destined to stay. It is a method for the transformation of capitalism into socialism by a series of successive steps. — Ludwig Von Mises

In the long run even the most despotic governments with all their brutality and cruelty are no match for ideas. Eventually the ideology that has won the support of the majority will prevail and cut the ground from under the tyrant's feet. Then the oppressed many will rise in rebellion and overthrow their masters. — Ludwig Von Mises

The jurist is totally unacquainted with the problem of the value of money; he knows nothing of fluctuations in its exchange-value. The naive popular belief in the stability of the value of money has been admitted, with all its obscurity, into the law, and no great historical cause of large and sudden variations in the value of money has ever provided. — Ludwig Von Mises

The living is not perfect because it is liable to change; the dead is not perfect because it does not live. — Ludwig Von Mises

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

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

The capitalist system, in spite of all obstacles put in its way by governments and politicians, has raised the standard of living of the masses in an unprecedented way. — Ludwig Von Mises

The older theories, which started from an erroneous conception of the social demand for money, could never arrive at a solution of this problem. Their sole contribution is limited to paraphrases of the proposition that an increase in the stock of money at the disposal of the community while the demand for it rClnains the same decreases the objective exchange-value of money, and that an increase of the demand with a constant available stock has the contrary effect, and so on. By a flash of genius, the formulators of the Quantity Theory had already recognized this. We cannot by any means call it an advance when the formula giving the amount of the demand for money (Volume of Transactions + Velocity of Circulation) was reduced to its elements. — Ludwig Von Mises

The urge toward action, i.e., improvement of the conditions of life, is inborn in man. Man himself changes from moment to moment and his valuations, volitions, and acts change with him. In the realm of action there is nothing perpetual but change. There — Ludwig Von Mises

The state is a human institution, not a superhuman being. He who says "state" means coercion and compulsion. He who says: There should be a law concerning this matter, means: The armed men of the government should force people to do what they do not want to do, or not to do what they like. He who says: This law should be better enforced, means: The police should force people to obey this law. He who says: The state is God, deifies arms and prisons. The worship of the state is the worship of force. — Ludwig Von Mises

The entrepreneur profits to the extent he has succeeded in serving the consumers better than other people have done. — Ludwig Von Mises

The usual terminology of political language is stupid. What is 'left' and what is 'right'? Why should Hitler be 'right' and Stalin, his temporary friend, be 'left'? Who is 'reactionary' and who is 'progressive'? Reaction against an unwise policy is not to be condemned. And progress towards chaos is not to be commended. — Ludwig Von Mises

If the present tax rates had been in effect from the beginning of our century, many who are millionaires today would live under more modest circumstances. But all those new branches of industry which supply the masses with articles unheard of before, would operate, if at all, on a much smaller scale, and their products would be beyond the reach of the common man. — Ludwig Von Mises

True, a socialistic society could see that 1000 litres of wine were better than 800 litres. It could decide whether or not 1000 litres of wine were to be preferred to 500 litres of oil. Such a decision would involve no calculation. The will of some man would decide. But the real business of economic administration, the adaptation of means to ends only begins when such a decision is taken. And only economic calculation makes this adaptation possible. Without such assistance, in the bewildering chaos of alternative materials and processes the human mind would be at a complete loss. Whenever we had to decide between different processes or different centres of production, we would be entirely at sea. — Ludwig Von Mises

In spite of the anticapitalistic policies of all governments and of almost all political parties, the capitalist mode of production — Ludwig Von Mises

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. — Ludwig Von Mises

As a rule, however, an increase in the value of money spreads only gradually. The first of those who have to content themselves with lower prices than before for the commodities they sell, while they still have to pay the old higher prices for the commodities they buy, are those who are injured by the increase in the value of money. Those, however, who are the last to have to reduce the prices of the commodities they sell, and have meanwhile been able to take advantage of the fall in the prices of other things, are those who profit by the change. — Ludwig Von Mises

The situation of having to belong to a state to which one does not wish is no less onerous if it is the result of an election than if one must endure it as the consequence of a military conquest. — Ludwig Von Mises

Government spending cannot create additional jobs. If the government provides the funds required (think stimulus) by taxing the citizens or by borrowing from the public, it abolishes on the one hand as many jobs as it creates on the other. — Ludwig Von Mises

The truth is that the government cannot give if it does not take from somebody ... It is not in the power of the government to make everybody more prosperous. — Ludwig Von Mises

The doctrine of the importance of hoards for stabilizing the objective exchange-value of money has gradually lost its adherents with the passing of time. Nowadays its supporters are few. — Ludwig Von Mises

An attempt is sometimes made to demonstrate the desirability of measures directed against speculation by reference to the fact that there are times when there is nobody in opposition to the bears in the foreign-exchange market so that they alone are able to determine the rate of exchange. That, of course, is not correct. Yet it must be noticed that speculation has a peculiar effect in the case of a currency whose progressive depreciation is to be expected while it is impossible to foresee when the depreciation will stop, if at all. While, in general, speculation reduces the gap between the highest and lowest prices without altering the average price-level, here, where the movement will presumably continue in the same direction, this naturally can not be the case. The effect of speculation here is to permit the fluctuation, which would otherwise proceed more uniformly, to proceed by fits and starts with the interposition of pauses. — Ludwig Von Mises

What makes small business develop into big business is not spending, but saving and capital accumulation. — Ludwig Von Mises

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

In science, compromise is a betrayal of truth. — Ludwig Von Mises

The bureaucrat is not free to aim at improvement. He is bound to obey rules and regulations established by a superior body. He has no right to embark upon innovations if his superiors do not approve of them. His duty and his virtue is to be obedient. — Ludwig Von Mises

The Reichswirtschaftsministerium ('Reich Ministry of Economic Affairs') tells the shop managers what and how to produce, at what prices and from whom to buy, at what prices and to whom to sell. It assigns every worker to his job and fixes his wages. It decrees to whom and on what terms the capitalists must entrust their funds. Market exchange is merely a sham. — Ludwig Von Mises

In the market economy the worker sells his services as other people sell their commodities. The employer is not the employee's lord. He is simply the buyer of services which he must purchase at their market price. — Ludwig Von Mises

These self-styled liberals and progressives are honestly convinced that they are true democrats. But their notion of democracy is just the opposite of that of the nineteenth century. They confuse democracy with socialism. They not only do not see that socialism and democracy are incompatible but they believe that socialism alone means real democracy. Entangled in this error, they consider the Soviet system a variety of popular government. — Ludwig Von Mises

No architect is held responsible for the behavior of those who inhabit the structure he designed. — Ludwig Von Mises

No increase in the welfare of the member of society can result from the availability of an additional quantity of money. — Ludwig Von Mises

The truth is that capitalism has not only multiplied population figures, but at the same time, improved the people's standard of living in an unprecedented way. Neither economic thinking nor historical experience suggests that any other social system could be as beneficial to the masses as capitalism. The results speak for themselves. The market economy needs no apologists and propagandists. It can apply to itself the words of Sir Christopher Wren's epitaph in St. Paul's: Si monumentum requires, circumspice. — Ludwig Von Mises

The illusiveness of this concept of national income is to be seen in its dependence on changes in the purchasing power of the monetary unit. The more inflation progresses, the higher rises the national income. — Ludwig Von Mises

Although Herbert Hoover in many ways prefigured him, it was Franklin D. Roosevelt who first tried to create an explicit corporate state in America with his National Recovery Administration (NRA). With its fascist-style Blue Eagle emblem, the NRA coordinated big business and labor in a central plan, and outlawed competition. The NRA even employed vigilante groups to spy on smaller businesses and report if they violated the plan. Just as in Mussolini's Italy, the beneficiaries of the U.S. corporate state were - in addition to the government itself - established economic interest groups. NRA cheerleaders included the National Association of Manufacturers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Bar Association, the United Mine Workers, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, and - above all - Gerard Swope of General Electric, who helped draft the NRA act. Only — Ludwig Von Mises

Depressions and mass unemployment are not caused by the free market but by government interference in the economy. — Ludwig Von Mises

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

Let us now leave the example of the isolated State and turn our attention to the international movements that arise from a fall in the value of money due to an increase in its amount. Here, again, the process is the same. There is no increase in the available stock of goods; only its distribution is altered. The country in which the new mines are situated and the countries that deal directly with it have their position bettered by the fact that they are still able to buy commodities from other countries at the old lower prices at a time when depreciation at home has already occurred. Those countries that are the last to be reached by the new stream of money are those which must ultimately bear the cost of the increased welfare of the other countries. — Ludwig Von Mises

Praxeology is a theoretical and systematic, not a historical, science. Its scope is human action as such, irrespective of all environmental, accidental, and individual circumstances of the concrete acts. Its cognition is purely formal and general without reference to the material content and the particular features of the actual case. It aims at knowledge valid for all instances in which the conditions exactly correspond to those implied in its assumptions and inferences. Its statements and propositions are not derived from experience. They are, like those of logic and mathematics, a priori. They are not subject to verification or falsification on the ground of experience and facts. — Ludwig Von Mises

The governments alone are responsible for the spread of the superstitious awe with which the common man looks upon every bit of paper upon which the treasury or agencies which it controls have printed the magical words legal tender. — Ludwig Von Mises

The word "Capitalism" expresses, for our age, the sum of all evil. Even the opponents of Socialism are dominated by socialist ideas. — Ludwig Von Mises

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

Monetary calculation is not the calculation, and certainly not the measurement, of value. Its basis is the comparison of the more important and the less important. It is an ordering according to rank, an act of grading (Cuhel), and not an act of measuring. It was a mistake to search for a measure of the value of goods. In the last analysis, economic calculation does not rest on the measurement of values, but on their arrangement in an order of rank. — Ludwig Von Mises

The unprecedented success of Keynesianism is due to the fact that it provides an apparent justification for the 'deficit spending' policies of contemporary governments. It is the pseudo-philosophy of those who can think of nothing else than to dissipate the capital accumulated by previous generations. — Ludwig Von Mises

Under the gold standard gold is money and money is gold. It is immaterial whether or not the laws assign legal tender quality only to gold coins minted by the government. — Ludwig Von Mises

It is the beginning of the 'demonetization' of the notes. The process is hastened by its panic-like character. It may be possible once, twice, perhaps even three or four times, to allay the fears of the public; but eventually the affair must run its course and then there is no longer any going back. Once the depreciation is proceeding so rapidly that sellers have to reckon with considerable losses even if they buy again as quickly as is possible, then the position of the currency is hopeless. — Ludwig Von Mises

He who disdains the fall in infant mortality and the gradual disappearance of famines and plagues may cast the first stone upon the materialism of the economists. — Ludwig Von Mises

The philosophy of protectionism is a philosophy of war. — Ludwig Von Mises

A short time ago the demagogues blamed capitalism for the poverty of the masses. Today they rather blame capitalism for the "affluence" that it bestows upon the common man. — Ludwig Von Mises

Economic knowledge necessarily leads to liberalism — Ludwig Von Mises

Liberty is meaningless if it is only the liberty to agree with those in power. — Ludwig Von Mises

That policy which aims at raising the objective exchange-value of money is called, after the most important means at its disposal, restrictionism or deflationism. This nomenclature does not really embrace all the policies that aim at an increase in the value of money. The aim of restrictionism may also be attained by not increasing the quantity of money when the demand for it increases, or by not increasing it enough. This method has quite often been adopted as a way of increasing the value of money in face of the problems of a depreciated credit-money standard. — Ludwig Von Mises

The superiority of the gold standard consists in the fact that the value of gold develops independent of political actions. — Ludwig Von Mises