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Government and state can never be perfect because they owe their raison d'être to the imperfection of man and can attain their end, the elimination of man's innate impulse to violence, only by recourse to violence, the very thing they are called upon to prevent.

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
Perfect
Innate
Ends
Attain
States
Prevent
Government
Impulse
Thing
Violence
Raison
Never
Called
Recourse
Men
State
Elimination
Upon
Imperfection

More quotes by Ludwig von Mises

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The main achievement of economics is that it has provided a theory of peaceful human cooperation. This is why the harbingers of violent conflict have branded it as a dismal science and why this age of wars, civil wars, and destruction has no use for it.
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Government means always coercion and compulsion and is by necessity the opposite of liberty.
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The market system makes all producers responsible to the consumer.
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Some think that they will exercise power for the general good, but that is what all those with power have believed. Power is evil in itself, regardless of who exercises it.
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Under capitalism everybody provides for their own needs by serving others.
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Do not give in to evil, but proceed ever more boldly against it.
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Depression is the aftermath of credit expansion.
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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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Lenin's ideal was to build a nation's production effort according to the model of the post office.
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The planner is a potential dictator who wants to deprive all other people of the power to plan and act according to their own plans. He aims at one thing only: the exclusive absolute preeminence of his own plan.
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Inflation is an increase in the quantity of money without a corresponding increase in the demand for money, i.e., for cash holdings.
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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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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.
Ludwig von Mises
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The law-abiding citizen by his labor serves both himself and his fellow man and thereby integrates himself peacefully into the social order. The robber, on the other hand, is intent, not on honest toil, but on the forcible appropriation of the fruits of others' labor.
Ludwig von Mises
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Violent resistance against the power of the state is the last resort of the minority in its effort to break loose from the oppression of the majority. ... The citizen must not be so narrowly circumscribed in his activities that, if he thinks differently from those in power, his only choice is either to perish or to destroy the machinery of state.
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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The idea of Socialism is at once grandiose and simple. . .We may say, in fact, that it is one of the most ambitious creations of the human spirit, . . .so magnificent, so daring, that it has rightly aroused the greatest admiration. If we wish to save the world from barbarism we have to refute Socialism, but we cannot thrust it carelessly aside.
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It is the rule of law alone which hinders the rulers from turning themselves into the worst gangsters.
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Progress is precisely that which rules and regulations did not foresee.
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History has witnessed the failure of many endeavors to impose peace by war, cooperation by coercion, unanimity by slaughtering dissidents.... A lasting order cannot be established by bayonets.
Ludwig von Mises