Top 500 Ludwig von Mises Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “The alcoholic and the drug addict harm only themselves by their behavior; the person who violates the rules of morality governing mans life in society harms not only himself, but everyone.”

— Ludwig von Mises

102. “History can tell us what happened in the past. But it cannot assert that it must happen again in the future.”

— Ludwig von Mises

103. “The distinctive principle of Western social philosophy is individualism.”

— Ludwig von Mises

104. “Liberalism must be intolerant of every sort of intolerance.”

— Ludwig von Mises

105. “Romanticism is man’s revolt against reason, as well as against the condition under which nature has compelled him to live.”

— Ludwig von Mises

106. “The boom squanders through malinvestment scarce factors of production and reduces the stock available through overconsumption; its alleged blessings are paid for by impoverishment.”

— Ludwig von Mises

107. “The middle-of-the-road policy is not an economic system that can last. It is a method for the realization of socialism by installments.”

— Ludwig von Mises

108. “Tyranny is the political corollary of socialism, as representative government is the political corollary of the market economy.”

— Ludwig von Mises

109. “The flowering of human society depends on two factors: the intellectual power of outstanding men to conceive sound social and economic theories, and the ability of these or other men to make these ideologies palatable to the majority.”

— Ludwig von Mises

110. “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

111. “It is common with narrow-minded people to reflect upon every respect in which other people differ from themselves. The.”

— Ludwig von Mises

112. “Progress is precisely that which rules and regulations did not foresee.”

— Ludwig von Mises

113. “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

114. “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

115. “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

116. “Spontaneous actions of individuals, aiming at nothing else than at the improvement of their own state of satisfaction, undermined the prestige of the coercive status system step by step.”

— Ludwig von Mises

117. “It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments.”

— Ludwig von Mises

118. “The struggle for freedom is not the struggle of the many against the few, but of minorities, sometimes of a minority of but one man gainst the majority.”

— Ludwig von Mises

119. “Society is joint action and cooperation in which each participant sees the other partner’s success as a means for the attainment of his own.”

— Ludwig von Mises

120. “Once the principle is admitted that it is the duty of the government to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments.”

— Ludwig von Mises

121. “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

122. “Those fighting for free enterprise and free competition do not defend the interests of those rich today. They want a free hand left to unknown men who will be the entrepreneurs of tomorrow...”

— Ludwig von Mises

123. “A nation cannot prosper if its members are not fully aware of the fact that what alone can improve their condition s is more and better production. And this can only be brought about by increased saving and capital accumulation.”

— Ludwig von Mises

124. “The elimination of profit, whatever methods may be resorted to for its execution, must transform society into a senseless jumble. It would create poverty for all.”

— Ludwig von Mises

125. “Fascism was an emergency makeshift. To view it as something more would be a fatal error.”

— Ludwig von Mises

126. “Under certain conditions, index numbers may do very useful service as an aid to investigation into the history and statistics of prices; for the extension of the theory of the nature and value of money they are unfortunately not very important.”

— Ludwig von Mises

127. “The government pretends to be endowed with the mystical power to accord favors out of an inexhaustible horn of plenty. It is both omniscient and omnipotent. It can by a magic wand create happiness and abundance. The truth is the government cannot give if it does not take from somebody.”

— Ludwig von Mises

128. “Capitalism or market economy is that system of social cooperation and division of labor that is based on private ownership of the means of production.”

— Ludwig von Mises

129. “Every innovation makes its appearance as a ‘luxury’ of the few well-to-do. After industry has become aware of it, the luxury then becomes a ‘necessity’ for all.”

— Ludwig von Mises

130. “There cannot be stable money within an environment dominated by ideologies hostile to the preservation of economic freedom.”

— Ludwig von Mises

131. “Unemployment doles can have no other effect than the perpetuation of unemployment.”

— Ludwig von Mises

132. “Nothing is more calculated to make a demagogue popular than a constantly reiterated demand for heavy taxes on the rich. Capital levies and high income taxes on the larger incomes are extraordinarily popular with the masses, who do not have to pay them.”

— Ludwig von Mises

133. “Aggressors cannot wage total war without introducing Socialism.”

— Ludwig von Mises

134. “Both force and money are impotent against ideas.”

— Ludwig von Mises

135. “Society is best served when the means of production are in the possession of those who know how to use them best.”

— Ludwig von Mises

136. “History does not provide any example of capital accumulation brought about by a government. As far as governments invested in the construction of roads, railroads, and other useful public works, the capital needed was provided by the savings of individual citizens and borrowed by the government.”

— Ludwig von Mises

137. “The aim of the popularization of economic studies is not to make every man an economist. The idea is to equip the citizen for his civic functions in community life.”

— Ludwig von Mises

138. “A nation, therefore, has no right to say to a province: You belong to me, I want to take you. A province consists of its inhabitants. If anybody has a right to be heard in this case it is these inhabitants. Boundary disputes should be settled by plebiscite.”

— Ludwig von Mises

139. “The characteristic feature of a free society is that it can function in spite of the fact that its members disagree in many judgments of value. Freedom really means the freedom to make mistakes.”

— Ludwig von Mises

140. “A new type of superstition has got hold of people’s minds, the worship of the state. People demand the exercise of the methods of coercion and compulsion, of violence and threat. Woe to anybody who does not bend his knee to the fashionable idols!”

— Ludwig von Mises

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

— Ludwig von Mises

142. “The democracy of the market consists in the fact that people themselves make their choices and that no dictator has the power to force them to submit to his value judgments.”

— Ludwig von Mises

143. “A man who chooses between drinking a glass of milk and a glass of a solution of potassium cyanide does not choose between two beverages; he chooses between life and death. A society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not choose between two social systems; it chooses between social cooperation and the disintegration of society. 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

144. “There is no reason why capitalists and entrepreneurs should be ashamed of earning profits.”

— Ludwig von Mises

145. “Society has arisen out of the works of peace; the essence of society is peacemaking. Peace and not war is the father of all things.”

— Ludwig von Mises

146. “Every step toward the elimination of profit is progress on the way toward social disintegration.”

— Ludwig von Mises

147. “There is simply no other choice than this: either to abstain from interference in the free play of the market, or to delegate the entire management of production and distribution to the government. Either capitalism or socialism: there exists no middle way.”

— Ludwig von Mises

148. “Do the American voters know that the unprecedented improvement in their standard of living that the last hundred years brought was the result of the steady rise in the per-head quota of capital invested? Do they realize that every measure leading to capital decumulation jeopardizes their prosperity?”

— Ludwig von Mises

149. “Neither the entrepreneurs nor the farmers nor the capitalists determine what has to be produced. The consumers do that.”

— Ludwig von Mises

150. “What is needed for a sound expansion of production is additional capital goods, not money or fiduciary media. The credit expansion is built on the sands of banknotes and deposits. It must collapse.”

— Ludwig von Mises