Quote

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.

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
Means
Consumers
States
Behave
Mean
Ultimately
Would
Police
Otherwise
Talk
State
Force
Spontaneously

More quotes by Ludwig von Mises

Image
Do not give in to evil, but proceed ever more boldly against it.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
What mankind needs today is liberation from the rule of nonsensical slogans and a return to sound reasoning.
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
There is no other planning for freedom and general welfare than to let the market system work.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
The democracy of the market consists in the fact that people themselves make their choices and that no dictator has the power to force them to submit to his value judgments.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
Many who are self-taught far excel the doctors, masters, and bachelors of the most renowned universities.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
Only stilted pedants can conceive the idea that there are absolute norms to tell what is beautiful and what is not. They try to derive from the works of the past a code of rules with which, as they fancy, the writers and artists of the future should comply. But the genius does not cooperate with the pundit.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
Capitalists have the tendency to move toward those countries in which there is plenty of labor available and at which labor is reasonable. And by the fact that they bring capital into these countries, they bring about a trend toward higher wage rates.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
A genius is always a teacher, never a pupil he is always self-made.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
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.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
What impels every man to the utmost exertion in the service of his fellow man. Is, in the market not compulsion on the part of gendarmes, hangmen and penal courts, it is self interest.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
Marx and Engels openly declared that the progressive income tax and the death tax are 'economically untenable' and that they advocated them only because 'they necessitate further inroads' upon the capitalist system and are 'unavoidable' as a means of bringing about socialism.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
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
Image
There is simply no other choice than this: either to abstain from interference in the free play of the market, or to delegate the entire management of production and distribution to the government. Either capitalism or socialism: there exists no middle way.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
There is no such thing as a just and fair method of exercising the tremendous power that interventionism puts into the hands of the legislature and the executive.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
Tyranny is the political corollary of socialism, as representative government is the political corollary of the market economy.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
The living is not perfect because it is liable to change the dead is not perfect because it does not live.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
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
Image
Only to bureaucrats can the idea occur that establishing new offices, promulgating new decrees, and increasing the number of government employees alone can be described as positive and beneficial measures.
Ludwig von Mises
Image
The prerequisite for more economic equality in the world is industrialization. And this is possible only through increased capital investment, increased capital accumulation.
Ludwig von Mises