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Not mythical material productive forces, but reason and ideas determine the course of human affairs. What is needed to stop the trend toward socialism and despotism is common-sense and moral courage.

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
Force
Needed
Affair
Sense
Liberty
Forces
Mythical
Ideas
Economic
Economics
Despotism
Reason
Stop
Determine
Trend
Human
Courses
Material
Trends
Humans
Course
Materials
Affairs
Moral
Toward
Socialism
Common
Courage
Productive

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The truth is that most people lack the intellectual ability and courage to resist a popular movement, however pernicious and ill-considered.
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If people do not consume their whole incomes, the non-consumed surplus can be invested, it increases the amount of capital goods available and thereby makes it possible to embark upon projects which could not be executed before.
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The mixing of politics and business not only is detrimental to politics, as is frequently observed, but even much more so to business.
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Education rears disciples, imitators, and routinists, not pioneers of new ideas and creative geniuses. The schools are not nurseries of progress and improvement, but conservatories of tradition and unvarying modes of thought.
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Do not give in to evil, but proceed ever more boldly against it.
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Government means always coercion and compulsion and is by necessity the opposite of liberty.
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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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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.
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Government is the only institution that can take a valuable commodity like paper, and make it worthless by applying ink.
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The recurrence of periods of depression and mass unemployment has discredited capitalism in the opinion of injudicious people. Yet these events are not the outcome of the operation of the free market. They are on the contrary the result of well-intentioned but ill-advised government interference with the market.
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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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Capitalists have the tendency to move toward those countries in which there is plenty of labor available and at which labor is reasonable. And by the fact that they bring capital into these countries, they bring about a trend toward higher wage rates.
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The market and its inescapable law are supreme.
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Every collectivist assumes a different source for the collective will, according to his own political, religious and national convictions.
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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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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.
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In spite of the anticapitalistic policies of all governments and of almost all political parties, the capitalist mode of production
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