The body of economic knowledge is an essential element in the structure of human civilization; it is the foundation upon which modern industrialism and all the moral, intellectual, technological, and therapeutical achievements of the last centuries have been built.

Ludwig von Mises

The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau.

Ludwig von Mises

garden blessing men

The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments.

Ludwig von Mises

government war peace

It is certain that many intellectuals envy the higher income of prosperous businessmen and that these feelings drive them toward socialism. They believe that the authorities of a socialist commonwealth would pay them higher salaries than those that they earn under capitalism.

Ludwig von Mises

envy feelings believe

Socialism is not in the least what it pretends to be. It is not the pioneer of a better and finer world, but the spoiler of what thousands of years of civilization have created. It does not build, it destroys. For destruction is the essence of it. It produces nothing, it only consumes what the social order based on private ownership in the means of production has created.

Ludwig von Mises

order mean years

The real bosses, in the capitalist system of market economy, are the consumers.

Ludwig von Mises

boss economy real

Every socialist is a disguised dictator.

Ludwig von Mises

dictator socialist

If one rejects laissez faire on account of mans fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action.

Ludwig von Mises

laissez-faire weakness government

Innovators and creative geniuses cannot be reared in schools. They are precisely the men who defy what the school has taught them.

Ludwig von Mises

creative men school

All people, however fanatical they may be in their zeal to disparage and to fight capitalism, implicitly pay homage to it by passionately clamoring for the products it turns out

Ludwig von Mises

liberty fighting people

Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer.

Ludwig von Mises

liberty politics men

The riches of successful entrepreneurs is not the cause of anybody's poverty; it is the consequence of the fact that the consumers are better supplied than they would have been in the absence of the entrepreneur's efforts.

Ludwig von Mises

entrepreneur effort successful

Inflationism, however, is not an isolated phenomenon. It is only one piece in the total framework of politico-economic and socio-philosophical ideas of our time. Just as the sound money policy of gold standard advocates went hand in hand with liberalism, free trade, capitalism and peace, so is inflationism part and parcel of imperialism, militarism, protectionism, statism and socialism.

Ludwig von Mises

philosophical hands ideas

The so-called liberals of today have the very popular idea that freedom of speech, of thought, of the press, freedom of religion, freedom from imprisonment without trial-that all these freedoms can be preserved in the absence of what is called economic freedom. They do not realize that, in a system where there is no market, where the government directs everything, all those other freedoms are illusory, even if they are made into laws and written up in constitutions.

Ludwig von Mises

freedom government ideas

Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.

Ludwig von Mises

government war peace

The issue is always the same: the government or the market. There is no third solution.

Ludwig von Mises

issues liberty government

Capitalism needs neither propaganda nor apostles. Its achievements speak for themselves. Capitalism delivers the goods.

Ludwig von Mises

achievement speak needs

He who serves the public best, makes the highest profits.

Ludwig von Mises

profit highest

It is vain to fight totalitarianism by adopting totalitarian methods. Freedom can only be won by men unconditionally committed to the principles of freedom. The first requisite for a better social order is the return to unrestricted freedom of thought and speech.

Ludwig von Mises

fighting men order

What pushes the masses into the camp of socialism is, even more than the illusion that socialism will make them richer, the expectation that it will curb all those who are better than they themselves are.

Ludwig von Mises

socialism envy expectations

[E]conomic history is a long record of government policies that failed because they were designed with a bold disregard for the laws of economics

Ludwig von Mises

government law long