Ludwig von Mises Quotes

The market economy-capitalism-is a social system of consumers’ supremacy.

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

The greater productivity of work under the division of labor is a unifying influence. It leads men to regard each other as comrades in a joint struggle for welfare, rather than as competitors in a struggle for existence. It makes friends out of enemies, peace out of war, society out of individuals.

In a game there are winners and losers. But a business deal is always advantageous for both parties. If both the buyer and the seller were not to consider the transaction as the most advantageous action they could choose under the prevailing conditions, they would not enter into the deal.

It is indeed one of the principal drawbacks of every kind of interventionism that it is so difficult to reverse the process.

A higher standard of living also brings about a higher standard of culture and civilization.

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.

Continued inflation inevitably leads to catastrophe.

The liberals of the eighteenth century, guided by the ideas of natural law and of the Enlightenment, demanded for everyone equality of political and civil rights… Nothing, however, is as ill-founded as the assertion of the alleged equality of all members of the human race.

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

State interference in economic life, which calls itself economic policy, has done nothing but destroy economic life. Prohibitions and regulations have by their general obstructive tendency fostered the growth of the spirit of wastefulness.

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.