Quote

Most of us have no sympathy with the rich idler who spends his life in pleasure without ever doing any work. But even he fulfills a function in the life of the social organism. He sets an example of luxury that awakens in the multitude a consciousness of new needs and gives industry the incentive to fulfill them.

Ludwig von Mises

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Ludwig von Mises
Age: 92 †
Born: 1881
Born: September 29
Died: 1973
Died: October 10
Economist
Philosopher
University Teacher
Writer
Lemberg
Austria
Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises
Ludwig Heinrich Mises
Social
Luxury
Organism
Ever
Function
Multitude
Without
Gives
Incentives
Idler
Giving
Industry
Multitudes
Idlers
Needs
Consciousness
Fulfill
Fulfills
Even
Example
Organisms
Awakens
Work
Rich
Sympathy
Incentive
Life
Pleasure
Sets
Spends

More quotes by Ludwig von Mises

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Reason is the main resource of man in his struggle for survival.
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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.
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The government and its chiefs do not have the powers of the mythical Santa Claus. They cannot spend except by taking out of the pockets of some people for the benefit of others.
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The entrepreneur profits to the extent he has succeeded in serving the consumers better than other people have done.
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What is called economic progress is the joint effect of the activities of the three progressive groups-or classes-of the savers, the scientist-inventors, and the entrepreneurs, operating in a market economy as far as it is not sabotaged by the endeavors of the nonprogressive majority of the routinists and the public policies supported by them.
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Anarchism misunderstands the real nature of man. It would be practicable only in a world of angels and saints
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Competition on the market aims at assigning to every individual that function in the social system in which he can render to all his fellow men the most valuable of the services he is able to perform.
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Society is only possible on these terms, that the individual finds therein a strengthening of his own ego and his own will.
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The market is not a place, a thing, or a collective entity. The market is a process, actuated by the interplay of the actions of the various individuals cooperating under the division of labor.
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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.
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The root of the evil is not the construction of new, more dreadful weapons. It is the spirit of conquest.
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As the science of economics...exploded the fallacies of every brand of utopianism, it was outlawed and stigmatized as unscientific.
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The capitalist system, in spite of all obstacles put in its way by governments and politicians, has raised the standard of living of the masses in an unprecedented way.
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Action based on reason, action therefore which is only to be understood by reason, knows only one end, the greatest pleasure of the acting individual.
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Despots and democratic majorities are drunk with power.
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All this talk: the state should do this or that, ultimately means: the police should force consumers to behave otherwise than they would behave spontaneously.
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Business is a means- the only means- to increase the quantity of goods available for preserving life and rendering it more agreeable.
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On the unhampered market there prevails an irresistible tendency to employ every factor of production for the best possible satisfaction of the most urgent needs of the consumers. If the government interfered with this process, it can only impair satisfaction it can never improve it.
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The most successful businessmen were often uneducated when measured by the scholastic standards of the teaching profession. But they were equal to their social function of adjusting production to the most urgent demand. Because of these merits the consumers chose them for business leadership.
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