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Historical knowledge is indispensable for those who want to build a better world

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
Build
Knowledge
Better
World
Indispensable
Historical

More quotes by Ludwig von Mises

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Nobody is in a position to decree what should make a fellow man happier.
Ludwig von Mises
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The capitalist system was termed capitalism not by a friend of the system, but by an individual who considered it to be the worst of all historical systems, the greatest evil that had ever befallen mankind. That man was Karl Marx.
Ludwig von Mises
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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.
Ludwig von Mises
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Reason is the main resource of man in his struggle for survival.
Ludwig von Mises
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The government pretends to be endowed with the mystical power to accord favors out of an inexhaustible horn of plenty. It is both omniscient and omnipotent. It can by a magic wand create happiness and abundance. The truth is the government cannot give if it does not take from somebody.
Ludwig von Mises
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What is a loophole? If the law does not punish a definite action or does not tax a definite thing, this is not a loophole. It is simply the law.
Ludwig von Mises
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A nation, therefore, has no right to say to a province: You belong to me, I want to take you. A province consists of its inhabitants. If anybody has a right to be heard in this case it is these inhabitants. Boundary disputes should be settled by plebiscite.
Ludwig von Mises
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In a game there are winners and losers. But a business deal is always advantageous for both parties. If both the buyer and the seller were not to consider the transaction as the most advantageous action they could choose under the prevailing conditions, they would not enter into the deal.
Ludwig von Mises
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In the world of reality, life, and human action there is no such thing as interests independent of ideas, preceding them temporarily and logically. What a man considers his interest is the result of his ideas.
Ludwig von Mises
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Sovereignty must not be used for inflicting harm on anyone, whether citizen or foreigner.
Ludwig von Mises
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Neither the entrepreneurs nor the farmers nor the capitalists determine what has to be produced. The consumers do that.
Ludwig von Mises
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Public works are not accomplished by the miraculous power of a magic wand. They are paid for by funds taken away from the citizens.
Ludwig von Mises
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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.
Ludwig von Mises
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This dilettantish inability to comprehend the essential issues of the conduct of production affairs is not only manifested in the writings of Marx and Engels. It permeates no less the contributions of contemporary pseudo-economics.
Ludwig von Mises
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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
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Man is not, like the animals, an obsequious puppet of instincts and sensual impulses. Man has the power to suppress instinctive desires, he has a will of his own, he chooses between incompatible ends.
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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In talking about equality and asking vehemently for its realization, nobody advocates a curtailment of his own present income.
Ludwig von Mises
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Freedom is indivisible. As soon as one starts to restrict it, one enters upon a decline on which it is difficult to stop.
Ludwig von Mises
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Anarchism misunderstands the real nature of man. It would be practicable only in a world of angels and saints
Ludwig von Mises