Quote

The common man is the sovereign consumer whose buying or abstention from buying ultimately determines what should be produced and in what quantity and quality.

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
Liberty
Quantity
Economic
Produced
Quality
Consumers
Common
Buying
Men
Ultimately
Abstention
Economics
Determines
Determine
Consumer
Whose
Sovereign

More quotes by Ludwig von Mises

Image
Capitalism has improved the standard of living of the wage earners to an unprecedented extent. The average American family enjoys today amenities of which, only a hundred years ago, not even the richest nabobs dreamed.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
The salesman thanks the customer for patronizing his shop and asks him to come again. But the socialists say: Be grateful to Hitler, render thanks to Stalin be nice and submissive, then the great man will be kind to you later too.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
The tricks and artifices of advertising are available to the seller of the better product no less than to the seller of the poorer product. But only the former enjoys the advantage derived from the better quality of his product.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
There is no reason why capitalists and entrepreneurs should be ashamed of earning profits.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
It is certain that many intellectuals envy the higher income of prosperous businessmen and that these feelings drive them toward socialism. They believe that the authorities of a socialist commonwealth would pay them higher salaries than those that they earn under capitalism.
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
The egalitarian doctrine is manifestly contrary to all the facts established by biology and by history. Only fanatical partisans of this theory can contend that what distinguishes the genius from the dullard is entirely the effect of postnatal influences.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
Every man aims at avoiding what causes him pain the activities of government ultimately consist in the infliction of pain. All great achievements of mankind were the product of a spontaneous effort on the part of individuals government substitutes coercion for voluntary action.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
There is no kind of freedom and liberty other than the kind which the market economy brings about.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
Economic control is not merely control of a sector of human life that can be separated from the rest it is the control of the means for all our ends.
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
Society is only possible on these terms, that the individual finds therein a strengthening of his own ego and his own will.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
Value is not intrinsic, it is not in things. It is within us it is the way in which man reacts to the conditions of his environment. Neither is value in words and doctrines, it is reflected in human conduct. It is not what a man or groups of men say about value that counts, but how they act.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
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
Image
The uncouth hordes of common men are not fit to recognize duly the merits of those who eclipse their own wretchedness.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
Progress of any kind is always at variance with the old and established ideas and therefore with the codes inspired by them. Every step of progress is a change involving heavy risks.
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
Profits are the driving force of the market economy. The greater the profits, the better the needs of the consumers are supplied... He who serves the public best, makes the highest profits.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
Scientific criticism has no nobler task than to shatter false beliefs.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
The history of mankind is the history of ideas.
Ludwig von Mises