Quote

Action is an attempt to substitute a more satisfactory state of affairs for a less satisfactory one. We call such a willfully induced alteration an exchange.

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
Affair
Induced
Call
Satisfactory
State
Substitute
Less
Exchange
Action
Substitutes
States
Affairs
Willfully
Needs
Libertarian
Alteration
Attempt
Alterations

More quotes by Ludwig von Mises

Image
Every innovation makes its appearance as a 'luxury' of the few well-to-do. After industry has become aware of it, the luxury then becomes a 'necessity' for all.
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
Under capitalism everybody is the architect of his own fortune.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
What workers must learn is that the only reason why wage rates are higher in the United States is that the per head quota of capital invested is higher.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
Government is a guarantor of liberty and is compatible with liberty only if its range is adequately restricted to the preservation of what is called economic freedom.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
Lenin's ideal was to build a nation's production effort according to the model of the post office.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
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.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
The better an entrepreneur succeeds, the more is he vilified and themore is he soaked by taxation.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
The masses, in their capacity as consumers, ultimately determine everybody's revenues and wealth.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
The capitalist system of production is an economic democracy in which every penny gives a right to vote. The consumers are the sovereign people. The capitalists, the entrepreneurs, and the farmers are the people's mandatories. If they do not obey, if they fail to produce, at the lowest possible cost, what
Ludwig von Mises
Image
Science does not give us absolute and final certainty. It only gives us assurance within the limits of our mental abilities and the prevailing state of scientific thought.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
You have the courage to tell the masses what no politician told them: you are inferior and all the improvements in your conditions which you simply take for granted you owe to the effort of men who are better than you. If this be arrogance, as some of your critics observed, it is still the truth that had to said in the age of the Welfare State.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
Scientific criticism has no nobler task than to shatter false beliefs.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
Manufacturing and commercial monopolies owe their origin not to a tendency imminent in a capitalist economy but to governmental interventionist policy directed against free trade and laissez faire.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
He who serves the public best, makes the highest profits.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
He who disdains the fall in infant mortality and the gradual disappearance of famines and plagues may cast the first stone upon the materialism of the economists.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
If, as is generally the case, the heirs are not equal to the demands which life makes on an entrepreneur, the inherited wealth rapidly vanishes.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
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
Image
To the masses, the catchwords of Socialism sound so enticing... so they will continue to work for Socialism, helping thereby to bring about the inevitable decline of the civilization which the nations of the West have taken thousands of years to build up.
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