Top 500 Ludwig von Mises Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments.”

— Ludwig von Mises

Featured in: Peace Quotes, Quotes About War, Government Quotes

2. “Do not give in to evil, but proceed ever more boldly against it.”

— Ludwig von Mises

Featured in: Evil Quotes

3. “Human action is purposeful behavior.”

— Ludwig von Mises

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

— Ludwig von Mises

5. “Freedom really means the freedom to make mistakes.”

— Ludwig von Mises

6. “Liberty is always freedom from the government.”

— Ludwig von Mises

7. “Economics must not be relegated to classrooms and statistical offices and must not be left to esoteric circles. It is the philosophy of human life and action and concerns everybody and everything. It is the pith of civilization and of man’s human existence.”

— Ludwig von Mises

Featured in: Quotes About Civilization

8. “The market is a democracy in which every penny gives a right to vote.”

— Ludwig von Mises

9. “The mark of the creative mind is that it defies a part of what it has learned.”

— Ludwig von Mises

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10. “Economic knowledge necessarily leads to liberalism.”

— Ludwig von Mises

11. “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

12. “There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.”

— Ludwig von Mises

13. “Capitalism needs neither propaganda nor apostles. Its achievements speak for themselves. Capitalism delivers the goods.”

— Ludwig von Mises

14. “Every socialist is a disguised dictator.”

— Ludwig von Mises

15. “Under capitalism everybody is the architect of his own fortune.”

— Ludwig von Mises

16. “Whoever wishes peace among peoples must fight statism.”

— Ludwig von Mises

17. “What generates war is the economic philosophy of nationalism: embargoes, trade and foreign exchange controls, monetary devaluation, etc. The philosophy of protectionism is a philosophy of war.”

— Ludwig von Mises

18. “The foundation of any and every civilization, including our own, is private ownership of the means of production. Whoever wishes to criticize modern civilization, therefore, begins with private property.”

— Ludwig von Mises

Featured in: Quotes About Civilization

19. “Socialism is not an alternative to capitalism; it is an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings.”

— Ludwig von Mises

20. “German Marxian’s coined the dictum: If socialism is against human nature, then human nature must be changed.”

— Ludwig von Mises

21. “Government means always coercion and compulsion and is by necessity the opposite of liberty.”

— Ludwig von Mises

22. “In public administration there is no connection between revenue and expenditure.”

— Ludwig von Mises

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

— Ludwig von Mises

24. “Government is the only institution that can take a valuable commodity like paper, and make it worthless by applying ink.”

— Ludwig von Mises

25. “He who is unfit to serve his fellow citizens wants to rule them.”

— Ludwig von Mises

26. “The fact is that, under a capitalistic system, the ultimate bosses are the consumers. The sovereign is not the state, it is the people.”

— Ludwig von Mises

27. “The program of classical liberalism, condensed into a single word, would have to read: property.”

— Ludwig von Mises

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

— Ludwig von Mises

29. “The fundamental law of the market is: the customer is always right.”

— Ludwig von Mises

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

— Ludwig von Mises

31. “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

32. “Some experts have declared that it is necessary to tax the people until it hurts. I disagree with these sadists.”

— Ludwig von Mises

33. “It is vain to fight totalitarianism by adopting totalitarian methods. Freedom can only be won by men unconditionally committed to the principles of freedom. The first requisite for a better social order is the return to unrestricted freedom of thought and speech.”

— Ludwig von Mises

34. “The most important thing to remember is that inflation is not an act of God, that inflation is not a catastrophe of the elements or a disease that comes like the plague. Inflation is a policy.”

— Ludwig von Mises

35. “Value is not intrinsic, it is not in things. It is within us; it is the way in which man reacts to the conditions of his environment. Neither is value in words and doctrines, it is reflected in human conduct. It is not what a man or groups of men say about value that counts, but how they act.”

— Ludwig von Mises

36. “Liberty is meaningless if it is only the liberty to agree with those in power.”

— Ludwig von Mises

37. “The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men. The worst evils which mankind ever had to endure were inflicted by governments.”

— Ludwig von Mises

38. “An entrepreneur cannot be trained. A man becomes and entrepreneur by seizing an opportunity and filling the gap. No special education is required for such a display of keen judgment, foresight, and energy.”

— Ludwig von Mises

39. “Historical knowledge is indispensable for those who want to build a better world.”

— Ludwig von Mises

40. “Innovators and creative geniuses cannot be reared in schools. They are precisely the men who defy what the school has taught them.”

— Ludwig von Mises

41. “Taxes are necessary. But the system of discriminatory taxation universally accepted under the misleading name of progressive taxation of income and inheritance is not a mode of taxation. It is rather a mode of disguised expropriation of the successful capitalists and entrepreneurs.”

— Ludwig von Mises

42. “Civilization is a work of peaceful co-operation.”

— Ludwig von Mises

43. “The gold standard makes the money’s purchasing power independent of the changing, ambitions and doctrines of political parties and pressure groups. This is not a defect of the gold standard; it is its main excellence.”

— Ludwig von Mises

44. “The philosophy of protectionism is a philosophy of war.”

— Ludwig von Mises

45. “He who only wishes and hopes does not interfere actively with the course of events and with the shaping of his own destiny.”

— Ludwig von Mises

46. “The mixing of politics and business not only is detrimental to politics, as is frequently observed, but even much more so to business.”

— Ludwig von Mises

47. “The history of mankind is the history of ideas. For it is ideas, theories, and doctrines that guide human action, determine the ultimate ends men aim at, and the choice of the means employed for the attainment of these ends.”

— Ludwig von Mises

48. “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

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49. “It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history.”

— Ludwig von Mises

50. “What makes small business develop into big business is not spending, but saving and capital accumulation.”

— Ludwig von Mises