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No very deep knowledge of economics is usually needed for grasping the immediate effects of a measure but the task of economics is to foretell the remoter effects, and so to allow us to avoid such acts as attempt to remedy a present ill by sowing the seeds of a much greater ill for the future.

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
Greater
Allow
Attempt
Knowledge
Usually
Acts
Remoter
Future
Effects
Seeds
Foretell
Much
Deep
Task
Sowing
Needed
Measure
Grasping
Present
Economics
Remedy
Liberty
Avoid
Immediate
Economic
Tasks
Ill

More quotes by Ludwig von Mises

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What can prevent the coming of totalitarian socialism is only a thorough change in ideologies. What we need is an open positive endorsement of that system to which we owe all the wealth that distinguished our age from the conditions of ages gone by.
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The consumers suffer when the laws of the country prevent the most efficient entrepreneurs from expanding the sphere of their activities. What made some enterprises develop into big business was precisely their success in filling best the demand of the masses.
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All present-day governments are fanatically committed to an easy money policy.
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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.
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War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings...but no one has for those reasons yet sought to celebrate earthquakes and cholera as stimulators of the productive forces in the general interest.
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As the science of economics...exploded the fallacies of every brand of utopianism, it was outlawed and stigmatized as unscientific.
Ludwig von Mises
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Despots and democratic majorities are drunk with power.
Ludwig von Mises
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It is the rule of law alone which hinders the rulers from turning themselves into the worst gangsters.
Ludwig von Mises
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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.
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Where there is no market economy, the best intentioned provisions of constitutions and laws remain a dead letter.
Ludwig von Mises
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Every restriction of trade creates vested interests that are from then on opposed to its removal.
Ludwig von Mises
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He who acts under an emotional impulse also acts. What distinguishes an emotional action from other actions is the valuation of input and output. Emotions disarrange valuations. Inflamed with passion, man sees the goal as more desirable and the price he has to pay for it as less burdensome than he would in cool deliberation.
Ludwig von Mises
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To the grumbler who complains about the unfairness of the market system only one piece of advice can be given: If you want to acquire wealth, then try to satisfy the public by offering them something that is cheaper or which they like better....Equality under the law gives you the power to challenge every millionaire.
Ludwig von Mises
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The issue is always the same: the government or the market. There is no third solution.
Ludwig von Mises
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The comparatively greater prosperity of the United States is an outcome of the fact that the New Deal did not come in 1900 or 1910, but only in 1933.
Ludwig von Mises
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During the 2300 years since Plato, very little opposition has been registered to his ideas.
Ludwig von Mises
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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
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The root of the evil is not the construction of new, more dreadful weapons. It is the spirit of conquest.
Ludwig von Mises
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It is merely a metaphor to call competition competitive war, or simply, war. The function of battle is destruction of competition, construction.
Ludwig von Mises
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Changes in human conditions are brought about by the pioneering of the cleverest and most energetic men. They take the lead and the rest of mankind follows them little by little.
Ludwig von Mises