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It is the rule of law alone which hinders the rulers from turning themselves into the worst gangsters.

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
Law
Hinders
Gangsters
Hinder
Rulers
Turning
Rule
Worst
Alone

More quotes by Ludwig von Mises

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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.
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It is merely a metaphor to call competition competitive war, or simply, war. The function of battle is destruction of competition, construction.
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The philosophy of protectionism is a philosophy of war. The wars of our age are not at variance with popular economic doctrines they are, on the contrary, the inescapable result of a consistent application of these doctrines.
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Many who are self-taught far excel the doctors, masters, and bachelors of the most renowned universities.
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Business is a means- the only means- to increase the quantity of goods available for preserving life and rendering it more agreeable.
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Despots and democratic majorities are drunk with power.
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What mankind needs today is liberation from the rule of nonsensical slogans and a return to sound reasoning.
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Experience shows that nothing is operated with less economy and with more waste of labor and material of every kind than public services and undertakings. Private enterprise on the other hand naturally induces the owner to work with the greatest economy in his own interest.
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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 boom is called good business, prosperity, and upswing. Its unavoidable aftermath, the readjustment of conditions to the real data of the market, is called crisis, slump, bad business, depression.
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During the 2300 years since Plato, very little opposition has been registered to his ideas.
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Every man aims at avoiding what causes him pain the activities of government ultimately consist in the infliction of pain. All great achievements of mankind were the product of a spontaneous effort on the part of individuals government substitutes coercion for voluntary action.
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The history of mankind is the history of ideas.
Ludwig von Mises
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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.
Ludwig von Mises
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There can be no freedom in art and literature where the government determines who shall create them.
Ludwig von Mises
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The usual terminology of political language is stupid. What is 'left' and what is 'right'? Why should Hitler be 'right' and Stalin, his temporary friend, be 'left'? Who is 'reactionary' and who is 'progressive'? Reaction against an unwise policy is not to be condemned. And progress towards chaos is not to be commended.
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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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Assistance granted to the unemployed does not dispose of unemployment. It makes it easier for the unemployed to remain idle.
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War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings...but no one has for those reasons yet sought to celebrate earthquakes and cholera as stimulators of the productive forces in the general interest.
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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