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“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 in constitutions.”
–Ludwig von Mises, Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow (1979)
“It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.”
–Murray N. Rothbard
"The emancipation of commerce from a money which is proving more and more useless in this way begins with the expulsion of the money from hoards. People begin at first to hoard other money instead so as to have marketable goods at their disposal for unforeseen future needs - perhaps precious-metal money and foreign notes, and sometimes also domestic notes of other kinds which have a higher value because they cannot be increased by the State '(e.g.the Romanoff rouble in Russia or the 'blue' money of communist Hungary); then ingots, precious stones, and pearls; even pictures, other objects of art, and postage stamps. A further step is the adoption of foreign currency or metallic money (i.e. for all practical purposes, gold) in credit transactions. Finally, when the domestic currency ceases to be used in retail trade, wages as well have to be paid in some other way than in pieces of paper which are then no longer good for anything.
The collapse of an inflation policy carried to its extreme - as in the United States in 1781 and in France in 1796 does not destroy the monetary system, but only the credit money or fiat money of the State that has overestimated the effectiveness of its own policy. The collapse emancipates commerce from etatism and establishes metallic money again."
–Ludwig von Mises, The Theory of Money and Credit
"The characteristic mark of the phenomenon is that the increase in the quantity of money causes a fall in the demand for money. The tendency toward a fall in purchasing power as generated by the increased supply of money is intensified by the general propensity to restrict cash holdings which it brings about. Eventually a point is reached where the prices at which people would be prepared to part with "real" goods discount to such an extent the expected progress in the fall of purchasing power that nobody has a sufficient amount of cash at hand to pay them. The monetary system breaks down; all transactions in the money concerned cease; a panic makes its purchasing power vanish altogether. People return either to barter or to the use of another kind of money."
–Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics
"If the government does not care how far foreign exchange rates may rise, it can for some time continue to cling to credit expansion. But one day the crack-up boom will annihilate its monetary system. On the other hand, if the authority wants to avoid the necessity of devaluing again and again at an accelerated pace, it must arrange its domestic credit policy in such a way as not to outrun in credit expansion the other countries against which it wants to keep its domestic currency at par."
–Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics
"What distinguishes the Austrian School and will lend it everlasting fame is its doctrine of economic action, in contrast to one of economic equilibrium or nonaction."
–Ludwig von Mises, Notes and Recollections
"The main and only concern of the Austrian economists was to contribute to the advancement of economics. They never tried to win the support of anybody by other means than by the convincing power developed in their books and articles."
–Ludwig von Mises, Austrian Economics: An Anthology
"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."
–Ludwig von Mises, Omnipotent Government
"The wavelike movement effecting the economic system, the recurrence of periods of boom which are followed by periods of depression is the unavoidable outcome of the attempts, repeated again and again, to lower the gross market rate of interest by means of credit expansion."
–Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics
"The cyclical fluctuations of business are not an occurrence originating in the sphere of the unhampered market, but a product of government interference with business conditions designed to lower the rate of interest below the height at which the free market would have fixed it."
–Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics
"The ultimate cause, therefore, of the phenomenon of wave after wave of economic ups and downs is ideological in character. The cycles will not disappear so long as people believe that the rate of interest may be reduced, not through the accumulation of capital, but by banking policy."
–Ludwig von Mises, On the Manipulation of Money and Credit
"The boom produces impoverishment. But still more disastrous are its moral ravages. It makes people despondent and dispirited. The more optimistic they were under the illusory prosperity of the boom, the greater is their despair and their feeling of frustration."
–Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics
"Credit expansion can bring about a temporary boom. But such a fictitious prosperity must end in a general depression of trade, a slump."
–Ludwig von Mises, Planned Chaos
"Human action is purposeful behavior."
–Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics
"Action is purposive conduct. It is not simply behavior, but behavior begot by judgments of value, aiming at a definite end and guided by ideas concerning the suitability or unsuitability of definite means. . . . It is conscious behavior. It is choosing. It is volition; it is a display of the will."
–Ludwig von Mises, The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science
"Action is an attempt to substitute a more satisfactory state of affairs for a less satisfactory one. We call such a willfully induced alteration an exchange."
–Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics
"Mans striving after an improvement of the conditions of his existence impels him to action. Action requires planning and the decision which of various plans is the most advantageous."
–Ludwig von Mises, The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science
"The We cannot act otherwise than each of them acting on his own behalf. They can either all act together in accord; or one of them may act for them all. In the latter case the cooperation of the others consists in their bringing about the situation which makes one man's action effective for them too. Only in this sense does the officer of a social entity act for the whole; the individual members of the collective body either cause or allow a single man's action to concern them too."
–Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics
"Common man does not speculate about the great problems. With regard to them he relies upon other people's authority, he behaves as "every decent fellow must behave," he is like a sheep in the herd. It is precisely this intellectual inertia that characterizes a man as a common man. Yet the common man does choose. He chooses to adopt traditional patterns or patterns adopted by other people because he is convinced that this procedure is best fitted to achieve his own welfare. And he is ready to change his ideology and consequently his mode of action whenever he becomes convinced that this would better serve his own interests."
–Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics
"In all societies, public opinion is determined by the intellectual classes, the opinion moulders of society. For most people neither originate nor disseminate ideas and concepts; on the contrary, they tend to adopt those ideas promulgated by the professional intellectual classes, the professional dealers in ideas."
–Murray N. Rothbard, For A New Liberty
"Cognizance of the relation between a cause and its effect is the first step toward mans orientation in the world and is the intellectual condition of any successful activity."
–Ludwig von Mises, The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science
"Monetary calculation and cost accounting constitute the most important intellectual tool of the capitalist entrepreneur, and it was no one less than Goethe who pronounced the system of double-entry bookkeeping one of the finest inventions of the human mind."
–Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism: The Classical Tradition
“Economics, like logic and mathematics, is a display of abstract reasoning. Economics can never be experimental and empirical. The economist does not need an expensive apparatus for the conduct of his studies. What he needs is the power to think clearly and to discern in the wilderness of events what is essential from what is merely accidental.”
–Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics
"All rational action is in the first place individual action. Only the individual thinks. Only the individual reasons. Only the individual acts."
–Ludwig von Mises, Socialism.
"The consumers suffer when the laws of the country prevent the most efficient entrepreneurs from expanding the sphere of their activities. What made some enterprises develop into big business was precisely their success in filling best the demand of the masses."
–Ludwig von Mises, Planned Chaos
“If our civilization will not in the next years or decades completely collapse, the gold standard will be restored.”
–Ludwig von Mises, (1965)
“Gold was not selected arbitrarily by governments to be the monetary standard. Gold had developed for many centuries on the free market as the best money; as the commodity providing the most stable and desirable monetary medium.”
–Murray N. Rothbard
"But I don’t believe the best solution would be to go back to a government-run gold standard. We should not trust politicians and bureaucrats with money, certainly never again with entirely unconstrained fiat money, but probably not even with a monetary system that comes with the strait jacket of an official gold standard. I would argue instead for the complete separation of money and state, and for an entirely private monetary system. Let the market decide what should be money and how much there should be of it. I do strongly believe that gold would again play an important role in such a system. After all, gold and silver have been chosen forms of money for thousands of years, in all cultures and societies. That is what the trading public always went for when it was free to choose."
–Detlev Schlichter, The Schlichter Files
"Wall Street, the media, academia, and, of course the Fed, are strongly on the side of fiat money."
–Detlev Schlichter, The Schlichter Files
"Media and academia are mainly pro-state, pro-politics, anti-gold"
–Detlev Schlichter, The Schlichter Files
"There was no reason whatever to abandon the principle of free enterprise in the field of banking."
–Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics
"It is extremely difficult for our contemporaries to conceive of the conditions of free banking because they take government interference with banking for granted and as necessary."
–Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics
"What is needed to prevent any further credit expansion is to place the banking business under the general rules of commercial and civil laws compelling every individual and firm to fulfill all obligations in full compliance with the terms of the contract."
–Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics
"Those politicians, professors and union bosses who curse big business are fighting for a lower standard of living."
–Ludwig von Mises, Theory and History
"Profit-seeking business is compelled to employ the most efficient methods of production. What checks a businessmans endeavors to improve the equipment of his firm is only lack of capital."
–Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics
"When pushed hard by economists, some welfare propagandists and socialists admit that impairment of the average standard of living can only be avoided by the maintenance of capital already accumulated and that economic improvement depends on accumulation of additional capital."
–Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics
"History does not provide any example of capital accumulation brought about by a government. As far as governments invested in the construction of roads, railroads, and other useful public works, the capital needed was provided by the savings of individual citizens and borrowed by the government."
–Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics
"The characteristic mark of economic history under capitalism is unceasing economic progress, a steady increase in the quantity of capital goods available, and a continuous trend toward an improvement in the general standard of living."
–Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics
"Capitalism is essentially a system of mass production for the satisfaction of the needs of the masses. It pours a horn of plenty upon the common man. It has raised the average standard of living to a height never dreamed of in earlier ages. It has made accessible to millions of people enjoyments which a few generations ago were only within the reach of a small elite."
–Ludwig von Mises, The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality
"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, Planning for Freedom
"The ultimate basis of an all around bureaucratic system is violence."
–Ludwig von Mises, Bureaucracy
"Bureaucratic management is management of affairs which cannot be checked by economic calculation."
–Ludwig von Mises, Bureaucracy
"A bureaucrat differs from a nonbureaucrat precisely because he is working in a field in which it is impossible to appraise the result of a mans effort in terms of money."
–Ludwig von Mises, Bureaucracy
"Nobody can be at the same time a correct bureaucrat and an innovator."
–Ludwig von Mises, Bureaucracy
"Seen from the point of view of the particular group interests of the bureaucrats, every measure that makes the governments payroll swell is progress."
–Ludwig von Mises, Planning for Freedom
"The bureaucrat is not free to aim at improvement. He is bound to obey rules and regulations established by a superior body. He has no right to embark upon innovations if his superiors do not approve of them. His duty and his virtue is to be obedient."
–Ludwig von Mises, Bureaucracy
"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, Omnipotent Government
"The trend toward bureaucratic rigidity is not inherent in the evolution of business. It is an outcome of government meddling with business."
–Ludwig von Mises, Bureaucracy
“A genius is precisely a man who defies all schools and rules, who deviates from the traditional roads of routine and opens up new paths through land inaccessible before….But, on the other hand, the government can bring about conditions which paralyze the efforts of a creative spirit and prevent him from rendering useful services to the community.”
–Ludwig von Mises, Bureaucracy
“The liberal critique of the argument in favor of war is fundamentally different from that of the humanitarians. It starts from the premise that not war, but peace, is the father of all things. What alone enables mankind to advance and distinguishes man from the animals is social cooperation. It is labor alone that is productive: it creates wealth and therewith lays the outward foundations for the inward flowering of man. War only destroys; it cannot create. War, carnage, destruction, and devastation we have in common with the predatory beasts of the jungle; constructive labor is our distinctively human characteristic.”
–Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism: The Classical Tradition
“It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments. Ideologically it belongs in the same class with political constitutions and bills of rights. The demand for constitutional guarantees and for bills of rights was a reaction against arbitrary rule and the nonobservance of old customs by kings. The postulate of sound money was first brought up as a response to the princely practice of debasing the coinage.”
–Ludwig von Mises. The Theory of Money and Credit
“It should be clear that any governmental interference with the depression process can only prolong it, thus making things worse from almost everyone’s point of view. Since the depression process is the recovery process, any halting or slowing down of the process impedes the advent of recovery. The depression readjustments must work themselves out before recovery can be complete. The more these readjustments are delayed, the longer the depression will have to last, and the longer complete recovery is postponed.”
–Murray N. Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market
“With the socialization of the health care system through institutions such as Medicaid and Medicare and the regulation of the insurance industry (by restricting an insurer’s right of refusal: to exclude any individual risk as uninsurable, and discriminate freely, according to actuarial methods, between different group risks) a monstrous machinery of wealth and income redistribution at the expense of responsible individuals and low-risk groups in favor of irresponsible actors and high-risk groups has been put in motion.”
–Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Democracy: The God That Failed
"What distinguishes man from animals is the insight into the advantages that can be derived from cooperation under the division of labor."
–Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics
"Civilization is a work of peaceful co-operation."
–Ludwig von Mises, Socialism
"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, Liberalism
"In the unhampered market economy there are no privileges, no protection of vested interests, no barriers preventing anybody from striving after any prize."
–Ludwig von Mises, Theory and History
"Liberalism champions private property in the means of production because it expects a higher standard of living from such an economic organization, not because it wishes to help the owners."
–Ludwig von Mises, Socialism
"That Liberalism aims at the protection of property and that it rejects war are two expressions of one and the same principle."
–Ludwig von Mises, Socialism
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