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

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

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If some peoples pretend that history or geography gives them the right to subjugate other races, nations, or peoples, there can be no peace.
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Nothing, however, is as ill founded as the assertion of the alleged equality of all members of the human race.
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The state is the only institution entitled to apply coercion and compulsion and to inflict harm upon individuals. This tremendous power cannot be abandoned to the discretion of some men, however competent and clever they may deem themselves. It is necessary to restrict its application. This is the task of the laws.
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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.
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All varieties of interference with the market phenomena not only fail to achieve the ends aimed at by their authors and supporters, but bring about a state of affairs which - from the point of view of their authors and advocates valuations - is less desirable than the previous state of affairs which they were designed to alter.
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It is inherent in the nature of the capitalistic economy that, in the final analysis, the employment of the factors of production is aimed only toward serving the wishes of consumers.
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If it is unnecessary to adjust the amount of expenditure to the means available, there is no limit to the spending of the great god State.
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No one can escape the influence of a prevailing ideology.
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The philosophy commonly called individualism is a philosophy of social cooperation and the progressive intensification of the social nexus.
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Progress is precisely that which rules and regulations did not foresee.
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Our whole civilization rests on the fact that men have always succeeded in beating off the attack of the re-distributors.
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Innovators and creative geniuses cannot be reared in schools. They are precisely the men who defy what the school has taught them.
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The masses favor socialism because they trust the socialist propaganda of the intellectuals. The intellectuals, not the populace, are molding public opinion.
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Nobody is in a position to decree what should make a fellow man happier.
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The aim of the popularization of economic studies is not to make every man an economist. The idea is to equip the citizen for his civic functions in community life.
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The desire for an increase of wealth can be satisfied through exchange, which is the only method possible in a capitalist economy, or by violence and petition as in a militarist society, where the strong acquire by force, the weak by petitioning.
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All the talk about the so-called unspeakable horror of early capitalism can be refuted by a single statistic: precisely in these years in which British capitalism developed, precisely in the age called the Industrial Revolution in England, in the years from 1760 to 1830, precisely in those years the population of England doubled.
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The entrepreneur profits to the extent he has succeeded in serving the consumers better than other people have done.
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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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The struggle for freedom is ultimately not resistance to autocrats or oligarchs but resistance to the despotism of public opinion.
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