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Ludwig von Mises Quotes - Page 22

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The men who are to protect the community against violent aggression easily turn into the most dangerous aggressors. They transgress their mandate. They misuse their power for the oppression of those whom they were

The men who are to protect the community against violent aggression easily turn into the most dangerous aggressors. They transgress their mandate. They misuse their power for the oppression of those whom they were expected to defend against oppression. The main political problem is how to prevent the police power from becoming tyrannical. This is the meaning of all the struggles for liberty.

Ludwig von Mises
Struggle, Men, Community
Ludwig Von Mises (1962). “The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method”

There is no kind of freedom and liberty other than the kind which the market economy brings about.

Ludwig von Mises
Liberty, Kind, Economy
Ludwig von Mises (2016). “Human Action”, p.350, Lulu Press, Inc

All that Lenin learned about business from the tales of his comrades who occasionally sat in business offices was that it required a lot of scribbling, recording, and ciphering. Thus, he declares that accounting and control are the chief things necessary for the organizing and correct functioning of society. . . . Here we have the philosophy of the filing clerk in its full glory.

Ludwig von Mises
Atheist, Philosophy, Office

You call it a 'loophole' when the government still allows you some freedom.

Ludwig von Mises
Government, Stills, Loopholes

The tricks and artifices of advertising are available to the seller of the better product no less than to the seller of the poorer product. But only the former enjoys the advantage derived from the better quality of his product.

Ludwig von Mises
Quality, Advertising, Advantage
Ludwig von Mises (2016). “Human Action”, p.397, Lulu Press, Inc

Once public opinion is convinced that the increase in the quantity of money will continue and never come to an end, and that consequently the prices of all commodities will not cease to rise, everybody becomes eager to buy as much as possible and restrict his cash holdings to minimum size... If the credit expansion is not stopped in time, the boom turns to crack-up boom: the flight into real values begins, and the whole monetary system founders.

Ludwig von Mises
Real, Public Opinion, Cracks

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
Giving, Receiving, Citizens
Ludwig Von Mises (1985). “Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War”, Libertarian Press

The recurrence of periods of depression and mass unemployment has discredited capitalism in the opinion of injudicious people. Yet these events are not the outcome of the operation of the free market. They are on the contrary the result of well-intentioned but ill-advised government interference with the market.

Ludwig von Mises
Government, People, Liberty
Ludwig von Mises (2015). “Middle of the Road Policy Leads to Socialism”, p.27, Ludwig von Mises Institute

The only source of the generation of additional capital goods is saving. If all the goods produced are consumed, no new capital comes into being.

Ludwig von Mises
Generations, Saving, Source
Ludwig Von Mises (1978). “Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, The”, p.84, Ludwig von Mises Institute

This dilettantish inability to comprehend the essential issues of the conduct of production affairs is not only manifested in the writings of Marx and Engels. It permeates no less the contributions of contemporary pseudo-economics.

Ludwig von Mises
Writing, Issues, Liberty

If you give the government the right to determine the consumption of the human body, to determine whether one should smoke or not smoke, drink or not drink, there is no good reply you can give to people who say, More important than the body is the mind and the soul, and man hurts himself much more by reading bad books, by listening to bad music and looking at bad movies. Therefore it is the duty of the government to prevent people from committing those faults. And, as you know, for many hundreds of years governments and authorities velieved that it was their duty.

Ludwig von Mises
Hurt, Freedom, Book
Ludwig Von Mises (2006). “Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow”, p.22, Ludwig von Mises Institute

Violent resistance against the power of the state is the last resort of the minority in its effort to break loose from the oppression of the majority. ... The citizen must not be so narrowly circumscribed in his activities that, if he thinks differently from those in power, his only choice is either to perish or to destroy the machinery of state.

Ludwig von Mises
Thinking, Effort, Choices
Ludwig Von Mises (1962). “The free and prosperous commonwealth: an exposition of the ideas of classical liberalism”

Each epoch has found in the Gospels what it sought to find there, and has overlooked what it wished to overlook.

Ludwig von Mises
Bible, Biblical, Found
Ludwig von Mises (2016). “Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist”, p.377, VM eBooks

Western civilization is based upon the libertarian principle, and all its achievements are the results of the action of free men.

Ludwig von Mises
Freedom, Men, Civilization
Ludwig Von Mises, Murray Newton Rothbard (1980). “Planning for freedom, and sixteen other essays and addresses”, Libertarian Press, Incorporated

These people talk of a "middle-of-the-road" policy. What they do not see is that the isolated interference, which means the interference with only one small part of the economic system, brings about a situation which the government itself — and the people who are asking for government interference — find worse than the conditions they wish to abolish: the people who are asking for rent control are very angry when they discover there is a shortage of apartments and a shortage of housing.

Ludwig von Mises
Mean, Government, People
"Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow".

Action is an attempt to substitute a more satisfactory state of affairs for a less satisfactory one. We call such a willfully induced alteration an exchange.

Ludwig von Mises
Needs, Libertarian, Action
Ludwig Von Mises (1963). “Human action: a treatise on economics”

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

Ludwig von Mises
Peace, War, Political
Ludwig von Mises (2016). “Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist”, p.44, VM eBooks

Notwithstanding all the passionate fulminations of the spokesmen of governments, the inevitable consequences of inflationism and expansionism...are coming to pass. And then, very late indeed, even simple people will discover that Keynes did not teach us how to perform the 'miracle...of turning a stone into bread,' but the not at all miraculous procedure of eating the seed corn.

Ludwig von Mises
Simple, Government, People

Capitalists have the tendency to move toward those countries in which there is plenty of labor available and at which labor is reasonable. And by the fact that they bring capital into these countries, they bring about a trend toward higher wage rates.

Ludwig von Mises
Country, Moving, Facts

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

Ludwig von Mises
Philosophy, Liberty, Cooperation
Ludwig von Mises (2016). “Human Action”, p.188, Lulu Press, Inc

The idea of Socialism is at once grandiose and simple. . .We may say, in fact, that it is one of the most ambitious creations of the human spirit, . . .so magnificent, so daring, that it has rightly aroused the greatest admiration. If we wish to save the world from barbarism we have to refute Socialism, but we cannot thrust it carelessly aside.

Ludwig von Mises
Simple, Ideas, Wish

At eighty-eight how do you feel when getting up in the morning?...Amazed!

Ludwig von Mises
Morning, Eight, Age

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.

Ludwig von Mises
Numbers, People, Dollars
Ludwig Von Mises (1978). “Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, The”, p.10, Ludwig von Mises Institute

Progress of any kind is always at variance with the old and established ideas and therefore with the codes inspired by them. Every step of progress is a change involving heavy risks.

Ludwig von Mises
Ideas, Risk, Progress
Ludwig von Mises (2016). “Bureaucracy: The Economist”, p.63, VM eBooks

Inflation is an increase in the quantity of money without a corresponding increase in the demand for money, i.e., for cash holdings.

Ludwig von Mises
Demand, Cash, Increase
"The Free Market and Its Enemies". Ludwig von Mises' speech to the Foundation for Economic Education, 1951.

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