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Action based on reason, action therefore which is only to be understood by reason, knows only one end, the greatest pleasure of the acting individual.

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
Understood
Greatest
Pleasure
Acting
Individual
Action
Based
Ends
Reason
Therefore

More quotes by Ludwig von Mises

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There is no reason why capitalists and entrepreneurs should be ashamed of earning profits.
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War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings...but no one has for those reasons yet sought to celebrate earthquakes and cholera as stimulators of the productive forces in the general interest.
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The policy of letting the free market determine the height of wage rates is the only reasonable and successful full-employment policy.
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The socialist system, however, forbids this fundamental freedom to choose one's own career. Under socialist conditions, there is only one economic authority, and it has the right to determine all matters concerning production.
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The first socialists were the intellectuals they, and not the masses, are the backbone of Socialism.
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If some peoples pretend that history or geography gives them the right to subjugate other races, nations, or peoples, there can be no peace.
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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.
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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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Government is a guarantor of liberty and is compatible with liberty only if its range is adequately restricted to the preservation of what is called economic freedom.
Ludwig von Mises
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A new type of superstition has got hold of people's minds, the worship of the state.
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Capital does not 'beget profit' as Marx thought. The capital goods as such are dead things that in themselves do not accomplish anything. If they are utilized according to a good idea, profit results. If they are utilized according to a mistaken idea, no profit or losses result. It is the entrepreneurial decision that creates either profit or loss.
Ludwig von Mises
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The bureaucrat is not free to aim at improvement. He is bound to obey rules and regulations established by a superior body. He has no right to embark upon innovations if his superiors do not approve of them. His duty and his virtue is to be obedient.
Ludwig von Mises
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War can really cause no economic boom, at least not directly, since an increase in wealth never does result from destruction of goods.
Ludwig von Mises
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The alcoholic and the drug addict harm only themselves by their behavior the person who violates the rules of morality governing mans life in society harms not only himself, but everyone.
Ludwig von Mises
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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.
Ludwig von Mises
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To the masses, the catchwords of Socialism sound so enticing... so they will continue to work for Socialism, helping thereby to bring about the inevitable decline of the civilization which the nations of the West have taken thousands of years to build up.
Ludwig von Mises
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Do not give in to evil, but proceed ever more boldly against it.
Ludwig von Mises
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If, as is generally the case, the heirs are not equal to the demands which life makes on an entrepreneur, the inherited wealth rapidly vanishes.
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The continued existence of society depends upon private property.
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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