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

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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.
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The market system is the basis of our civilization. Its only alternative is the Führer principle.
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Progress is precisely that which rules and regulations did not foresee.
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Socialism and interventionism. Both have in common the goal of subordinating the individual unconditionally to the state.
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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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It is certain that many intellectuals envy the higher income of prosperous businessmen and that these feelings drive them toward socialism. They believe that the authorities of a socialist commonwealth would pay them higher salaries than those that they earn under capitalism.
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If the government objects to monopoly prices for new inventions, it should stop granting patents.
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The truth is that the government cannot give if it does not take from somebody...It is not in the power of the government to make everybody more prosperous.
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It is inherent in the nature of the capitalistic economy that, in the final analysis, the employment of the factors of production is aimed only toward serving the wishes of consumers.
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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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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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Laissez faire does not mean: let soulless mechanical forces operate. It means: let individuals choose how they want to cooperate in the social division of labor and let them determine what the entrepreneurs should produce.
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Scientific criticism has no nobler task than to shatter false beliefs.
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Not mythical material productive forces, but reason and ideas determine the course of human affairs. What is needed to stop the trend toward socialism and despotism is common-sense and moral courage.
Ludwig von Mises
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Taxes are necessary. But the system of discriminatory taxation universally accepted under the misleading name of progressive taxation of income and inheritance is not a mode of taxation. It is rather a mode of disguised expropriation of the successful capitalists and entrepreneurs.
Ludwig von Mises
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All those evils which the [liberals] interpret as evidence of the failure of capitalism, are the necessary outcome of interference with the market.
Ludwig von Mises
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The Marxians love of democratic institutions was a stratagem only, a pious fraud for the deception of the masses. Within a socialist community there is no room left for freedom.
Ludwig von Mises
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Western civilization is based upon the libertarian principle, and all its achievements are the results of the action of free men.
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Government policies try to prevent the emergence of serious unemployment by credit expansion, i.e., inflation. The outcome was rising prices, renewed demands for higher wages and reiterated credit expansion in short, protracted inflation.
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Our whole civilization rests on the fact that men have always succeeded in beating off the attack of the re-distributors.
Ludwig von Mises