Quotes – Ludwig von Mises – Volitional Science Bookshelf ™

“If history could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization”
― Ludwig von Mises

“Many who are self-taught far excel the doctors, masters, and bachelors of the most renowned universities.”
― Ludwig von Mises

“All rational action is in the first place individual action. Only the individual thinks. Only the individual reasons. Only the individual acts.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis

“Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping toward destruction. Therefore, everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interest of everyone hangs on the result. Whether he chooses or not, every man is drawn into the great historical struggle, the decisive battle into which our epoch has plunged us.”
― Ludwig Von Mises

“He who is unfit to serve his fellow citizens wants to rule them.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Bureaucracy

“Socialism is an alternative to capitalism as potassium cyanide is an alternative to water.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics

“Freedom is indivisible. As soon as one starts to restrict it, one enters upon a decline on which it is difficult to stop.”
― Ludwig von Mises

“It is not the fault of the entrepreneurs that the consumers, the people, the common man, prefer liquor to Bibles and detective stories to serious books, and that governments prefer guns to butter. The entrepreneur does not make greater profits in selling bad things than in selling good things. His profits are the greater the better he succeeds in providing the consumers with those things they ask for most intensely.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics

“All people, however fanatical they may be in their zeal to disparage and to fight capitalism, implicitly pay homage to it by passionately clamoring for the products it turns out”
― Ludwig Von Mises

“The worst thing that can happen to a socialist is to have his country ruled by socialists who are not his friends.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Marxism Unmasked: From Delusion to Destruction

“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, Interventionism: An Economic Analysis

“The market system is the basis of our civilization. Its only alternative is the Führer principle.”
― Ludwig von Mises

“In a battle between force and an idea, the latter always prevails.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism: The Classical Tradition

“In the market economy the consumers are supreme. Consumers determine, by their buying or abstention from buying, what should be produced, by whom and how, of what quality and in what quantity. The entrepreneurs, capitalists, and landowners who fail to satisfy in the best possible and cheapest way the most urgent of the not yet satisfied wishes of the consumers are forced to go out of business and forfeit their preferred position. In business offices and in laboratories the keenest minds are busy fructifying the most complex achievements of scientific research for the production of ever better implements and gadgets for people who have no inkling of the scientific theories that make the fabrication of such things possible. The bigger an enterprise is, the more it is forced to adjust its production activities to the changing whims and fancies of the masses, its masters. The fundamental principle of capitalism is mass production to supply the masses. It is the patronage of the masses that makes enterprises grow into bigness. The common man is supreme in the market economy. He is the customer “who is always right.”
― Ludwig Von Mises, Economic Freedom and Interventionism: An Anthology of Articles and Essays