Top 500 Ludwig von Mises Quotes (2023 Update)
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151. “In the bureaucratic machine of socialism the way toward promotion is not achievement but the favor of the superiors.”

— Ludwig von Mises

152. “Experience shows that nothing is operated with less economy and with more waste of labor and material of every kind than public services and undertakings. Private enterprise on the other hand naturally induces the owner to work with the greatest economy in his own interest.”

— Ludwig von Mises

153. “In many fields of the administration of interventionist measures, favoritism simply cannot be avoided.”

— Ludwig von Mises

154. “In the case of money, subjective use-value and subjective exchange-value coincide. Both are derived from objective exchange-value, for money has no utility other than that arising from the possibility of obtaining other economic goods in exchange for it.”

— Ludwig von Mises

155. “It is untrue that some are poor because others are rich. If an order of society in which incomes were equal replaced the capitalist order, everyone would become poorer.”

— Ludwig von Mises

156. “The welfare of a people lies not in casting other peoples down but in peaceful collaboration.”

— Ludwig von Mises

157. “There would not be any profits but for the eagerness of the public to acquire the merchandise offered for sale by the successful entrepreneur. But the same people who scramble for these articles vilify the businessman and call his profit ill-got.”

— Ludwig von Mises

158. “Economic progress is the work of the savers, who accumulate capital, and of the entrepreneurs, who turn capital to new uses.”

— Ludwig von Mises

159. “The standard of living of the common man is higher in those countries which have the greatest number of wealthy entrepreneurs.”

— Ludwig von Mises

160. “Under bilateral competition, market-price is determined within a range whose upper limit is set by the valuations of the lowest bidder among the actual buyers and the highest offerer among the excluded would-be sellers, and whose lower limit is set by the valuations of the lowest offerer among the actual sellers and the highest bidder among the excluded would-be buyers.”

— Ludwig von Mises

161. “Our whole civilization rests on the fact that men have always succeeded in beating off the attack of the re-distributors.”

— Ludwig von Mises

162. “The struggle for freedom is ultimately not resistance to autocrats or oligarchs but resistance to the despotism of public opinion.”

— Ludwig von Mises

163. “It is the rule of law alone which hinders the rulers from turning themselves into the worst gangsters.”

— Ludwig von Mises

164. “The truth is that most people lack the intellectual ability and courage to resist a popular movement, however pernicious and ill-considered.”

— Ludwig von Mises

165. “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

166. “The entrepreneur profits to the extent he has succeeded in serving the consumers better than other people have done.”

— Ludwig von Mises

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

— Ludwig von Mises

168. “Anarchism misunderstands the real nature of man. It would be practicable only in a world of angels and saints.”

— Ludwig von Mises

169. “Innovation is the whim of an elite before it becomes a need of the public.”

— Ludwig von Mises

170. “The criterion of truth is that it works even if nobody is prepared to acknowledge it.”

— Ludwig von Mises

171. “An anti-something movement displays a purely negative attitude. It has no chance whatever to succeed. Its passionate diatribes virtually advertise the program they attack. People must fight for something that they want to achieve, not simply reject an evil, however bad it may be.”

— Ludwig von Mises

172. “Peace and not war is the father of all things.”

— Ludwig von Mises

173. “Mankind does not drink alcohol because there are breweries, distilleries, and vineyards; men brew beer, distill spirits, and grow grapes because of the demand for alcoholic drinks.”

— Ludwig von Mises

174. “Economic prosperity is not so much a material problem; it is, first of all, an intellectual, spiritual, and moral problem.”

— Ludwig von Mises

175. “Human civilization is not something achieved against nature; it is rather the outcome of the working of the innate qualities of man.”

— Ludwig von Mises

176. “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

177. “In the socialist commonwealth every economic change becomes an undertaking whose success can be neither appraised in advance nor later retrospectively determined. There is only groping in the dark. Socialism is the abolition of rational economy.”

— Ludwig von Mises

178. “The essence of democracy is not that everyone makes and administers laws but that lawgivers and rulers should be dependent on the people’s will in such a way that they may be peaceably changed if conflict occurs.”

— Ludwig von Mises

179. “It has always been the task of the new generation to provoke changes.”

— Ludwig von Mises

180. “It is impossible to understand the history of economic thought if one does not pay attention to the fact that economics as such is a challenge to the conceit of those in power.”

— Ludwig von Mises

181. “Without speculation there can be no economic activity reaching beyond the immediate present.”

— Ludwig von Mises

182. “If one regards inflation as an evil, then one has to stop inflating. One has to balance the budget of the government.”

— Ludwig von Mises

183. “Governments, political parties, pressure groups, and the bureaucrats of the educational hierarchy think they can avoid the inevitable consequences of unsuitable measures by boycotting and silencing the independent economists. But truth persists and works, even if nobody is left to utter it.”

— Ludwig von Mises

184. “The inequality of income and fortunes is essential in capitalism.”

— Ludwig von Mises

185. “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

186. “Plato and Hitler were both the same kind of consistent socialists who planned also for the production of future socialists, the breeding and education of future members of society.”

— Ludwig von Mises

187. “Capitalism gave the world what it needed, a higher standard of living for a steadily increasing number of people.”

— Ludwig von Mises

188. “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

189. “Manufacturing and commercial monopolies owe their origin not to a tendency imminent in a capitalist economy but to governmental interventionist policy directed against free trade and laissez faire.”

— Ludwig von Mises

190. “The concept of a ‘just’ or ‘fair’ price is devoid of any scientific meaning; it is a disguise for wishes, a striving for a state of affairs different from reality.”

— Ludwig von Mises

191. “The only source from which an entrepreneurs profits stem is his ability to anticipate better than other people the future demand of the consumers.”

— Ludwig von Mises

192. “The uncouth hordes of common men are not fit to recognize duly the merits of those who eclipse their own wretchedness.”

— Ludwig von Mises

193. “Marx and Engels openly declared that the progressive income tax and the death tax are ‘economically untenable’ and that they advocated them only because ‘they necessitate further inroads’ upon the capitalist system and are ‘unavoidable’ as a means of bringing about socialism.”

— Ludwig von Mises

194. “The worst law is better than bureaucratic tyranny.”

— Ludwig von Mises

195. “A lasting order cannot be established by bayonets.”

— Ludwig von Mises

196. “In order to succeed in business a man does not need a degree from a school of business administration. These schools train the subalterns for routine jobs. They certainly do not train entrepreneurs.”

— Ludwig von Mises

197. “If some peoples pretend that history or geography gives them the right to subjugate other races, nations, or peoples, there can be no peace.”

— Ludwig von Mises

198. “The Pseudo-liberals monopolize the teaching jobs at many universities. Only men who agree with them are appointed as teachers and instructors of the social sciences, and only textbooks supporting their ideas are used.”

— Ludwig von Mises

199. “Public opinion always wants easy money, that is, low interest rates.”

— Ludwig von Mises

200. “It is labor alone that is productive: it creates wealth and therewith lays the outward foundations for the inward flowering of man.”

— Ludwig von Mises