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In the world of reality, life, and human action there is no such thing as interests independent of ideas, preceding them temporarily and logically. What a man considers his interest is the result of his ideas.

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
World
Action
Logically
Reality
Temporarily
Ideas
Considers
Human
Interests
Humans
Result
Thing
Independent
Men
Results
Life
Interest
Preceding

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Manufacturing and commercial monopolies owe their origin not to a tendency imminent in a capitalist economy but to governmental interventionist policy directed against free trade and laissez faire.
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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.
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It is not conclusive proof of a doctrine's correctness that its adversaries use the police, the hangman, and violent mobs to fight it. But it is a proof of the fact that those taking recourse to violent oppression are in their subconscious convinced of the untenability of their own doctrines.
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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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The better an entrepreneur succeeds, the more is he vilified and themore is he soaked by taxation.
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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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The entrepreneur profits to the extent he has succeeded in serving the consumers better than other people have done.
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The issue is always the same: the government or the market. There is no third solution.
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The criterion of truth is that it works even if nobody is prepared to acknowledge it.
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Despots and democratic majorities are drunk with power.
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The mixing of politics and business not only is detrimental to politics, as is frequently observed, but even much more so to business.
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Once the principle is admitted that it is the duty of the government to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments.
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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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Depression is the aftermath of credit expansion.
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An essential point in the social philosophy of interventionism is the existence of an inexhaustible fund which can be squeezed forever. The whole system of interventionism collapses when the fountain is drained off: The Santa Clause principle liquidates itself.
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Sovereignty must not be used for inflicting harm on anyone, whether citizen or foreigner.
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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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Society is only possible on these terms, that the individual finds therein a strengthening of his own ego and his own will.
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Scientific research sooner or later, but inevitably, encounters something ultimately given that it cannot trace back to something else of which it would appear as the regular or necessary derivative. Scientific progress consists in pushing further back this ultimately given.
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If the members of parliament no longer consider themselves mandatories of the taxpayers but deputies of those receiving salaries, wages, subsidies, doles, and other benefits from the treasury, democracy is done for.
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