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The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men. The worst evils which mankind ever had to endure were inflicted by governments.

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
Men
Dangerous
Menace
Worst
Evils
State
Corrupt
Evil
Governments
Force
Endure
States
Worship
Inflicted
Government
Civilization
Vile
Ever
Mankind
Incompetent

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Against nature and within nature there is no freedom.
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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.
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Inflation has always been an important resource of policies of war and revolution and why we also find it in the service of socialism.
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The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster.
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All those evils which the [liberals] interpret as evidence of the failure of capitalism, are the necessary outcome of interference with the market.
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As the science of economics...exploded the fallacies of every brand of utopianism, it was outlawed and stigmatized as unscientific.
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Marx and Engels openly declared that the progressive income tax and the death tax are 'economically untenable' and that they advocated them only because 'they necessitate further inroads' upon the capitalist system and are 'unavoidable' as a means of bringing about socialism.
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The gold standard did not collapse. Governments abolished it in order to pave the way for inflation. The whole grim apparatus of oppression and coercion, policemen, customs guards, penal courts, prisons, in some countries even executioners, had to be put into action in order to destroy the gold standard.
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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.
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The prevailing legal and moral views of a time are held not only by those whom they benefit but by those, too, who appear to suffer from them. Their domination is expressed in that fact- that the people from whom they claim sacrifice accept them.
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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.
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In the long run even the most despotic governments with all their brutality and cruelty are no match for ideas. Eventually the ideology that has won the support of the majority will prevail and cut the ground from under the tyrant's feet. Then the oppressed many will rise in rebellion and overthrow their masters.
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The market system is the basis of our civilization. Its only alternative is the Führer principle.
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Tyranny is the political corollary of socialism, as representative government is the political corollary of the market economy.
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As the prosperity of the nation and the height of wage rates depend on a continual increase in the capital invested in its plants, mines and farms, it is one of the foremost tasks of good government to remove all obstacles that hinder the accumulation and investment of new capital.
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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.
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There is no kind of freedom and liberty other than the kind which the market economy brings about.
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The main political problem is how to prevent the police power from becoming tyrannical. This is the meaning of all the struggles for liberty.
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There prevails on a free labor market a tendency toward full employment.
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Capitalism gave the world what it needed, a higher standard of living for a steadily increasing number of people.
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