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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
Reason
Therefore
Understood
Greatest
Pleasure
Acting
Individual
Action
Ends
Based

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Every collectivist assumes a different source for the collective will, according to his own political, religious and national convictions.
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Aggressors cannot wage total war without introducing Socialism.
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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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Planning other people's actions means to prevent them from planning for themselves, means to deprive them of their essentially human quality, means enslaving them.
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Under a socialist mode of production all personal incentives which selfishness provides under capitalism are removed, and a premium is put upon laziness and negligence. Whereas in a capitalist society selfishness incites everyone to the utmost diligence, in a socialist society it makes for inertia and laxity.
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All this talk: the state should do this or that, ultimately means: the police should force consumers to behave otherwise than they would behave spontaneously.
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The comparatively greater prosperity of the United States is an outcome of the fact that the New Deal did not come in 1900 or 1910, but only in 1933.
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Servile labour disappeared because it could not stand the competition of free labour its un-profitability sealed its doom in the market economy.
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He who acts under an emotional impulse also acts. What distinguishes an emotional action from other actions is the valuation of input and output. Emotions disarrange valuations. Inflamed with passion, man sees the goal as more desirable and the price he has to pay for it as less burdensome than he would in cool deliberation.
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Public works are not accomplished by the miraculous power of a magic wand. They are paid for by funds taken away from the citizens.
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Nobody can be at the same time a correct bureaucrat and an innovator
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There is no other planning for freedom and general welfare than to let the market system work.
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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.
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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.
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The egalitarian doctrine is manifestly contrary to all the facts established by biology and by history. Only fanatical partisans of this theory can contend that what distinguishes the genius from the dullard is entirely the effect of postnatal influences.
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If the government objects to monopoly prices for new inventions, it should stop granting patents.
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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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