Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Choices
Management
Delegate
Free
Capitalism
Delegates
Government
Market
Interference
Play
Entire
Distribution
Way
Choice
Socialism
Simply
Production
Either
Productions
Middle
Exists
Abstain

More quotes by Ludwig von Mises

Image
Aggressors cannot wage total war without introducing Socialism.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
The Marxians love of democratic institutions was a stratagem only, a pious fraud for the deception of the masses. Within a socialist community there is no room left for freedom.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
Socialism is the renunciation of rational economy.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
There can be no freedom in art and literature where the government determines who shall create them.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
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
Image
In a battle between force and an idea, the latter always prevails.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
There is, in fact, only one solution: the state, the government, the laws must not in any way concern themselves with schooling or education. Public funds must not be used for such purposes. The rearing and instruction of youth must be left entirely to parents and to private associations and institutions
Ludwig von Mises
Image
Economic progress is the work of the savers, who accumulate capital, and of the entrepreneurs, who turn capital to new uses.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
The public firm can nowhere maintain itself in free competition with the private firm it is possible today only where it has a monopoly that excludes competition. Even that alone is evidence of its lesser economic productivity.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
The consumers are asking for, they lose their office. Their task is service to the consumer. Profit and loss are the instruments by means of which the consumers keep a tight rein on all business activities.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
The market economy-capitalism-is a social system of consumers' supremacy.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
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
Image
The average American worker enjoys amenities for which Croesus, Crassus, the Medici, and Louis XIV would have envied him.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
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
Image
Where there is no market economy, the best intentioned provisions of constitutions and laws remain a dead letter.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
The methods of the natural sciences cannot be applied to human behavior because this behaviorlacks the peculiarity that characterizes events in the field of the natural sciences, viz., regularity.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
Capitalism gave the world what it needed, a higher standard of living for a steadily increasing number of people.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
It is always the individual who thinks. Society does not think any more than it eats or drinks. The evolution of human reasoning from the naive thinking of primitive man to the more subtle thinking of modern science took place within society. However, thinking itself is always an achievement of individuals.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
Fortunes cannot grow someone has to increase them.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
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