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The first socialists were the intellectuals they, and not the masses, are the backbone of Socialism.

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
Backbone
Intellectuals
Masses
Socialism
Mass
Firsts
First
Socialists

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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.
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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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In the socialist commonwealth every economic change becomes an undertaking whose success can be neither appraised in advance nor later retrospectively determined. There is only groping in the dark. Socialism is the abolition of rational economy.
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Economic progress is the work of the savers, who accumulate capital, and of the entrepreneurs, who turn capital to new uses.
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There can be no freedom in art and literature where the government determines who shall create them.
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Many who are self-taught far excel the doctors, masters, and bachelors of the most renowned universities.
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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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Economic control is not merely control of a sector of human life that can be separated from the rest it is the control of the means for all our ends.
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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.
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The market system is the basis of our civilization. Its only alternative is the Führer principle.
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The boom squanders through malinvestment scarce factors of production and reduces the stock available through overconsumption its alleged blessings are paid for by impoverishment.
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The struggle for freedom is ultimately not resistance to autocrats or oligarchs but resistance to the despotism of public opinion.
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The public firm can nowhere maintain itself in free competition with the private firm it is possible today only where it has a monopoly that excludes competition. Even that alone is evidence of its lesser economic productivity.
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In all countries with a settled bureaucracy people used to say: The cabinets come and go, but the bureaus remain.
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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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