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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.

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
Every
Causes
Ultimately
Coercion
Men
Suffering
Individuals
Aims
Pain
Product
Achievements
Individual
Achievement
Substitutes
Action
Products
Avoiding
Part
Activity
Spontaneous
Infliction
Government
Mankind
Activities
Voluntary
Great
Effort
Aim
Consist

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Political ideas that have dominated the public mind for decades cannot be refuted through rational arguments. They must run their course in life and cannot collapse otherwise than in great catastrophe.
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Do not give in to evil, but proceed ever more boldly against it.
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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.
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Only stilted pedants can conceive the idea that there are absolute norms to tell what is beautiful and what is not. They try to derive from the works of the past a code of rules with which, as they fancy, the writers and artists of the future should comply. But the genius does not cooperate with the pundit.
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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 struggle for freedom is ultimately not resistance to autocrats or oligarchs but resistance to the despotism of public opinion.
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The average American worker enjoys amenities for which Croesus, Crassus, the Medici, and Louis XIV would have envied him.
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What workers must learn is that the only reason why wage rates are higher in the United States is that the per head quota of capital invested is higher.
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The consumers are asking for, they lose their office. Their task is service to the consumer. Profit and loss are the instruments by means of which the consumers keep a tight rein on all business activities.
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A society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not choose between two social systems it chooses between social cooperation and the disintegration of society. Socialism is not an alternative to capitalism it is an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings.
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Every specific tax, as well as the nation's whole tax system, becomes self-defeating above a certain height of the rates.
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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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Neither the entrepreneurs nor the farmers nor the capitalists determine what has to be produced. The consumers do that.
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Every restriction of trade creates vested interests that are from then on opposed to its removal.
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The root of the evil is not the construction of new, more dreadful weapons. It is the spirit of conquest.
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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 productivity of social cooperation surpasses in every respect the sum total of the production of isolated individuals.
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What impels every man to the utmost exertion in the service of his fellow man. Is, in the market not compulsion on the part of gendarmes, hangmen and penal courts, it is self interest.
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The history of mankind is the history of ideas. For it is ideas, theories, and doctrines that guide human action, determine the ultimate ends men aim at, and the choice of the means employed for the attainment of these ends.
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There can be no freedom in art and literature where the government determines who shall create them.
Ludwig von Mises