Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by Ludwig von Mises

Image
Competition on the market aims at assigning to every individual that function in the social system in which he can render to all his fellow men the most valuable of the services he is able to perform.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
In the socialist commonwealth every economic change becomes an undertaking whose success can be neither appraised in advance nor later retrospectively determined. There is only groping in the dark. Socialism is the abolition of rational economy.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
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
Image
Scientific criticism has no nobler task than to shatter false beliefs.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
Society is only possible on these terms, that the individual finds therein a strengthening of his own ego and his own will.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
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
Image
Plato and Hitler were both the same kind of consistent socialists who planned also for the production of future socialists, the breeding and education of future members of society.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
The criterion of truth is that it works even if nobody is prepared to acknowledge it.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
Progressive taxation of income and profits means that precisely those parts of the income which people would have saved and invested are taxed away
Ludwig von Mises
Image
The methods of the natural sciences cannot be applied to human behavior because this behaviorlacks the peculiarity that characterizes events in the field of the natural sciences, viz., regularity.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
The Pseudo-liberals monopolize the teaching jobs at many universities. Only men who agree with them are appointed as teachers and instructors of the social sciences, and only textbooks supporting their ideas are used.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
The standard of living of the common man is higher in those countries which have the greatest number of wealthy entrepreneurs.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
If you increase the quantity of money, you bring about the lowering of the purchasing power of the monetary unit.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
Under capitalism everybody provides for their own needs by serving others.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
A short time ago the demagogues blamed capitalism for the poverty of the masses. Today they rather blame capitalism for the affluence that it bestows upon the common man.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
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.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
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
Image
The market system makes all producers responsible to the consumer.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
The public firm can nowhere maintain itself in free competition with the private firm it is possible today only where it has a monopoly that excludes competition. Even that alone is evidence of its lesser economic productivity.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
Progress is precisely that which rules and regulations did not foresee.
Ludwig von Mises