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The government pretends to be endowed with the mystical power to accord favors out of an inexhaustible horn of plenty. It is both omniscient and omnipotent. It can by a magic wand create happiness and abundance. The truth is the government cannot give if it does not take from somebody.

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
Doe
Plenty
Horn
Give
Magic
Omnipotent
Government
Somebody
Endowed
Take
Create
Horns
Wand
Giving
Happiness
Accord
Pretends
Cannot
Mystical
Wands
Truth
Abundance
Omniscient
Power
Favors
Inexhaustible

More quotes by Ludwig von Mises

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True, governments can reduce the rate of interest in the short run. They can issue additional paper money. They can open the way to credit expansion by the banks. They can thus create an artificial boom and the appearance of prosperity. But such a boom is bound to collapse soon or late and to bring about a depression.
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The foundation of any and every civilization, including our own, is private ownership of the means of production. Whoever wishes to criticize modern civilization, therefore, begins with private property.
Ludwig von Mises
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Public opinion always wants easy money, that is, low interest rates.
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Government and state can never be perfect because they owe their raison d'être to the imperfection of man and can attain their end, the elimination of man's innate impulse to violence, only by recourse to violence, the very thing they are called upon to prevent.
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Where there is no market economy, the best intentioned provisions of constitutions and laws remain a dead letter.
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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.
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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.
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All the talk about the so-called unspeakable horror of early capitalism can be refuted by a single statistic: precisely in these years in which British capitalism developed, precisely in the age called the Industrial Revolution in England, in the years from 1760 to 1830, precisely in those years the population of England doubled.
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Changes in human conditions are brought about by the pioneering of the cleverest and most energetic men. They take the lead and the rest of mankind follows them little by little.
Ludwig von Mises
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Socialism and interventionism. Both have in common the goal of subordinating the individual unconditionally to the state.
Ludwig von Mises
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Assistance granted to the unemployed does not dispose of unemployment. It makes it easier for the unemployed to remain idle.
Ludwig von Mises
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How pale is the art of sorcerers, witches, and conjurors when compared with that of the government's Treasury Department!
Ludwig von Mises
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The continued existence of society depends upon private property.
Ludwig von Mises
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It is merely a metaphor to call competition competitive war, or simply, war. The function of battle is destruction of competition, construction.
Ludwig von Mises
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Nobody can be at the same time a correct bureaucrat and an innovator
Ludwig von Mises
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Nothing, however, is as ill founded as the assertion of the alleged equality of all members of the human race.
Ludwig von Mises
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The Pseudo-liberals monopolize the teaching jobs at many universities. Only men who agree with them are appointed as teachers and instructors of the social sciences, and only textbooks supporting their ideas are used.
Ludwig von Mises
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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.
Ludwig von Mises
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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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In talking about equality and asking vehemently for its realization, nobody advocates a curtailment of his own present income.
Ludwig von Mises