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Human action is purposeful behavior.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 11; p. 11 | Action | |
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Human life is an unceasing sequence of single actions.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 45; p. 45 | Action | |
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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.
| 280 | The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science | p. 34 | Action | |
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Man thinks not only for the sake of thinking, but also in order to act.
| 280 | Epistemological Problems of Economics | p. 37 | Action | |
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Economics, as a branch of the more general theory of human action, deals with all human action, i.e., with mans purposive aiming at the attainment of ends chosen, whatever these ends may be.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 880; p. 884 | Action | |
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Action is a display of potency and control that are limited. It is a manifestation of man who is restrained by the circumscribed powers of his mind, the physiological nature of his body, the vicissitudes of his environment, and the scarcity of external factors on which his welfare depends.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 70; p. 70 | Action | |
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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.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 97; p. 97 | Action | |
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Most actions do not aim at anybodys defeat or loss. They aim at an improvement in conditions.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 116; p. 116 | Action | |
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The vigorous man industriously striving for the improvement of his condition acts neither more nor less than the lethargic man who sluggishly takes things as they come. For to do nothing and to be idle are also action, they too determine the course of events.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 13; p. 13 | Action | |
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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.
| 280 | The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science | p. 90 | Action | |
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All rational action is in the first place individual action. Only the individual thinks. Only the individual reasons. Only the individual acts.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 97 | Action | |
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It is a widespread fallacy that skillful advertising can talk the consumers into buying everything that the advertiser wants them to buy. The consumer is, according to this legend, simply defenseless against high-pressure advertising. If this were true, success or failure in business would depend on the mode of advertising only.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 317; p. 321 | Advertising | |
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The tricks and artifices of advertising are available to the seller of the better product no less than to the seller of the poorer product. But only the former enjoys the advantage derived from the better quality of his product.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 318; p. 321 | Advertising | |
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It is an enormous simplification to speak of the American mind. Every American has his own mind.
| 280 | Theory and History | pp. 191-92 | America | |
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Used to the conditions of a capitalistic environment, the average American takes it for granted that every year business makes something new and better accessible to him. Looking backward upon the years of his own life, he realizes that many implements that were totally unknown in the days of his youth and many others which at that time could be enjoyed only by a small minority are now standard equipment of almost every household. He is fully confident that this trend will prevail also in the future. He simply calls it the American way of life and does not give serious thought to the question of what made this continuous improvement in the supply of material goods possible.
| 280 | Economic Freedom and Interventionism | p. 7 | America | |
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The most serious dangers for American freedom and the American way of life do not come from without.
| 280 | Economic Freedom and Interventionism | p. 101 | America | |
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Full government control of all activities of the individual is virtually the goal of both national parties.
| 280 | Economic Freedom and Interventionism | p. 157 | America | |
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The nonhuman animals never proceed beyond instinctive urges and conditioned reflexes.
| 280 | The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science | p. 49 | Animals | |
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It was not the first time in French history that the nationalists put their anti-Semitism above their French patriotism. In the Dreyfus Affair they fought vigorously in order to let a treacherous officer quietly evade punishment while an innocent Jew languished in prison.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | p. 190 | Anti-Semitism | |
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The Nazis have an ally in every town or village where there is a man eager to get rid of a Jewish competitor. The secret weapon of Hitler is the anti-Jewish inclinations of many millions of shopkeepers and grocers, of doctors and lawyers, professors and writers.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | p. 192 | Anti-Semitism | |
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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.
| 280 | Planned Chaos | p. 22 | AntiTrust Laws | |
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Those politicians, professors and union bosses who curse big business are fighting for a lower standard of living.
| 280 | Theory and History | p. 147 | AntiTrust Laws | |
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In the last hundred years many churches and even cathedrals were built and many more government palaces, schools, and libraries. But they do not show any original conception.... Only in apartment houses, office buildings and private homes have we seen something develop that may be qualified as an architectural style of our age.
| 280 | The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality | p. 78 | Architecture | |
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The enjoyment of art and literature presupposes a certain disposition and susceptibility on the part of the public. Taste is inborn to only a few. Others must cultivate their aptitude for enjoyment.
| 280 | Theory and History | p. 63 | Arts | |
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Under capitalism, material success depends on the appreciation of a mans achievements on the part of the sovereign consumers. In this regard there is no difference between the services rendered by a manufacturer and those rendered by a producer, an actor or a playwright.
| 280 | The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality | p. 31 | Arts | |
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There has never been an era in which the many were prepared to do justice to contemporary art. Reverence to the great authors and artists has always been limited to small groups.
| 280 | The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality | p. 79 | Arts | |
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What characterizes capitalism is not the bad taste of the crowds, but the fact that these crowds, made prosperous by capitalism, became consumers of literatureof course, of trashy literature. The book market is flooded by a downpour of trivial fiction for the semibarbarians. But this does not prevent great authors from creating imperishable works.
| 280 | The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality | p. 79 | Arts | |
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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.
| 280 | Theory and History | p. 63 | Arts | |
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Art is nothing more than a faltering and inadequate attempt to express what has been thus experienced and to give some form to its content. The work of art captures not the experience, but only what its creator has been able to express of the experience.
| 280 | Epistemological Problems of Economics | p. 45 | Arts | |
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The most primitive work of art also can express the strongest experience, and it speaks to us, if only we let it.
| 280 | Epistemological Problems of Economics | p. 46 | Arts | |
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A work of art is an attempt to experience the universe as a whole. One cannot analyze or dissect it into parts and comment on it without destroying its intrinsic character.
| 280 | Epistemological Problems of Economics | p. 136 | Arts | |
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There can be no freedom in art and literature where the government determines who shall create them.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | p. 52 | Arts | |
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It is a hopeless task to interpret a symphony, a painting, or a novel. The interpreter at best tries to tell us something about his reaction to the work…. There are no words to describe the ineffable.
| 280 | Theory and History | p. 276 | Arts | |
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Whom should the government entrust with the task of deciding whether a newcomer is really a great painter or not? It would have to rely on the judgment of the critics, and the professors of the history of art who are always looking back into the past yet who very rarely have shown the talent to discovery new genius.
| 280 | Economic Policy | p. 31 | Arts | |
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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.
| 280 | Austrian Economics: An Anthology | p. 72 | Austrian economists | |
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Those whom the world called the Austrian economists were, in the Austrian universities, somewhat reluctantly tolerated outsiders.
| 280 | Austrian Economics: An Anthology | p. 56 | Austrian economists | |
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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.
| 280 | Notes and Recollections | p. 36 | Austrian economists | |
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How one carries on in the face of unavoidable catastrophe is a matter of temperament. In high school, as was custom, I had chosen a verse by Virgil to be my motto: Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito. Do not give in to evil, but proceed ever more boldly against it. I recalled these words during the darkest hours of the war. Again and again I had met with situations from which rational deliberation found no means of escape; but then the unexpected intervened, and with it came salvation. I would not lose courage even now. I wanted to do everything an economist could do. I would not tire in saying what I knew to be true.
| 280 | Notes and Recollections | p. 70 | Autobiographical | |
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Otto Bauer was too bright not to realize that I was right, but he never forgave me for having turned him into a Millerand. The attacks of his fellow Bolshevists hit close to home, but he directed his animosity toward me instead of toward his opponents. A powerful loather, he opted for ignoble means to destroy me.
| 280 | Notes and Recollections | pp. 1819 | Autobiographical | |
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My theories explain, but cannot slow the decline of a great civilization. I set out to be a reformer, but only became the historian of decline.
| 280 | Notes and Recollections | p. 115 | Autobiographical | |
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There was no reason whatever to abandon the principle of free enterprise in the field of banking.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 440; p. 443 | Banking | |
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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.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 444; p. 447 | Banking | |
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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.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 440; p. 443 | Banking | |
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Imprudent granting of credit is bound to prove just as ruinous to a bank as to any other merchant.
| 280 | The Theory of Money and Credit | p. 295 | Banking | |
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The social system of private property and limited government is the only system that tends to debarbarize all those who have the innate capacity to acquire personal culture.
| 280 | Liberty and Property | p. 26 | Barbarism | |
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Behaviorism fails to explain why different people adjust themselves to the same conditions in different ways.
| 280 | Theory and History | p. 245 | Behaviorism | |
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Behaviorism proposes to study human behavior according to the methods developed by animal and infant psychology. It seeks to investigate reflexes and instincts, automatisms and unconscious reactions. But it has told us nothing about the reflexes that have built cathedrals, railroads, and fortresses, the instincts that have produced philosophies, poems, and legal systems, the automatisms that have resulted in the growth and decline of empires, the unconscious reactions that are splitting atoms.
| 280 | Theory and History | pp. 245-46 | Behaviorism | |
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The bigness and the economic power of the railroad companies did not impede the emergence of the motor car and the airplane.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 276; p. 275 | Big Business | |
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Big business always servesdirectly or indirectlythe masses.
| 280 | The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality | p. 2 | Big Business | |
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Not offices and bureaucrats, but big business deserves credit for the fact that most of the families in the United States own a motorcar and a radio set.
| 280 | Planned Chaos | p. 15 | Big Business | |
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The big business enterprises are almost without exception corporations, precisely because they are too big for single individuals to own them entirely. The growth of business units has far outstripped the growth of individual fortunes.
| 280 | Theory and History | p. 118 | Big Business | |
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The characteristic mark of big business is mass production for the satisfaction of the needs of the masses. Under capitalism the workers themselves, directly or indirectly, are the main consumers of all those things that the factories are turning out.
| 280 | The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality | p. 42 | Big Business | |
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What makes a firm big is its success in best filling the demands of the buyers. If the bigger enterprise did not better serve the people than a smaller one, it would long since have been reduced to smallness.
| 280 | Planning for Freedom | p. 134 | Big Business | |
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Big business depends entirely on the patronage of those who buy its products: the biggest enterprises loses its power and its influence when it loses its customers.
| 280 | Economic Policy | p. 4 | Big Business | |
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There is no doubt that Bohm-Bawerk's book is the most eminent contribution to modern economic theory. For every economist it is a must to study it most carefully and to scrutinize its content with the utmost care.
| 280 | Economic Freedom and Interventionism | p. 133 | Bhm-Bawerk, Eugen von | |
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A book of the size and profundity of Capital and Interest is not easy reading. But the effort expended pays very well.
| 280 | Economic Freedom and Interventionism | p. 135 | Bhm-Bawerk, Eugen von | |
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[In a liberal world] it makes no difference where the frontiers of a country are drawn... In such a world the people of every village or district could decide by plebiscite to which state they want to belong.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | p. 92 | Borders | |
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The much abused shopkeepers have abolished slavery and serfdom, made woman the companion of man with equal rights, proclaimed equality before the law and freedom of thought and opinion, declared war on war, abolished torture, and mitigated the cruelty of punishment. What cultural force can boast of similar achievements?
| 280 | Socialism | p. 398 | Bourgeoisie | |
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Through all the changes in the prevailing system of social stratification, moral philosophers continued to hold fast to the fundamental idea of Ciceros doctrine that making money is degrading.
| 280 | Epistemological Problems of Economics | p. 194 | Bourgeoisie | |
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The worst law is better than bureaucratic tyranny.
| 280 | Bureaucracy | p. 76 | Bureaucracy | |
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In all countries with a settled bureaucracy people used to say: The cabinets come and go, but the bureaus remain.
| 280 | Bureaucracy | p. 55 | Bureaucracy | |
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Bureaucratic management is management of affairs which cannot be checked by economic calculation.
| 280 | Bureaucracy | p. 48 | Bureaucracy | |
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Nobody can be at the same time a correct bureaucrat and an innovator.
| 280 | Bureaucracy | p. 67 | Bureaucracy | |
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The ultimate basis of an all around bureaucratic system is violence.
| 280 | Bureaucracy | p. 104 | Bureaucracy | |
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Seen from the point of view of the particular group interests of the bureaucrats, every measure that makes the governments payroll swell is progress.
| 280 | Planning for Freedom | p. 48 | Bureaucracy | |
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If you have to convince a group of people who are not directly dependent on a solution of a problem, you will never succeed.
| 280 | Economic Policy | pp. 30-31 | Bureaucracy | |
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A government enterprise can never be commercialized no matter how many external features of private enterprise are superimposed on it.
| 280 | A Critique of Interventionism | p. 159 | Bureaucracy | |
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The first virtue of an administrator is to abide by the codes and decrees.
| 280 | Bureaucracy | p. 41 | Bureaucracy | |
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Bureaucratic conduct of affairs is conduct bound to comply with detailed rules and regulations fixed by the authority of a superior body. It is the only alternative to profit management. . . . Whenever the operation of a system is not directed by the profit motive, it must be directed by bureaucratic rules.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 307; p. 310 | Bureaucracy | |
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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.
| 280 | Bureaucracy | p. 66 | Bureaucracy | |
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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.
| 280 | Bureaucracy | p. 53 | Bureaucracy | |
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Progress of any kind is always at variance with the old and established ideas and therefore with the codes inspired by them. Every step of progress is a change involving heavy risks.
| 280 | Bureaucracy | p. 67 | Bureaucracy | |
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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.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | p. x | Bureaucracy | |
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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.
| 280 | Nation, State, and Economy | p. 186 | Bureaucracy | |
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The trend toward bureaucratic rigidity is not inherent in the evolution of business. It is an outcome of government meddling with business.
| 280 | Bureaucracy | p. 12 | Bureaucracy | |
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No private enterprise will ever fall prey to bureaucratic methods of management if it is operated with the sole aim of making profit.
| 280 | Bureaucracy | p. 64 | Bureaucracy | |
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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.
| 280 | On the Manipulation of Money and Credit | p. 139 | Business Cycles | |
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Credit expansion can bring about a temporary boom. But such a fictitious prosperity must end in a general depression of trade, a slump.
| 280 | Planned Chaos | p. 21 | Business Cycles | |
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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.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 562; p. 565 | Business Cycles | |
|
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.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | p. 251 | Business Cycles | |
|
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.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 570; p. 572 | Business Cycles | |
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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.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 574; p. 576 | Business Cycles | |
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Of course, as a rule capitalists and entrepreneurs are not saints excelling in the virtue of self-denial. But neither are their critics saintly.
| 280 | Planning for Freedom | p. 146 | Businessmen | |
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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.
| 280 | Liberalism | p. 97 | Economic Calculation | |
|
Accountancy is not perfect. The precision of its statements is only illusory. The valuations of goods and rights with which it deals are always based on estimates depending on more or less uncertain and unknown factors.
| 280 | The Theory of Money and Credit | p. 234 | Economic Calculation | |
|
The elaborate methods of modern bookkeeping, accountancy, and business statistics provide the enterpriser with a faithful image of all his operations. He is in a position to learn how successful or unsuccessful every one of his transactions was.
| 280 | Bureaucracy | p. 32 | Economic Calculation | |
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Now nobody ever contended that one could produce without working. But neither is it possible to produce without capital goods, the previously produced factors of further production.
| 280 | Planning for Freedom | p. 111 | Capital | |
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What the workers must learn is that the only reason why wage rates are higher in the United States is that the per head quota of capital invested is higher.
| 280 | Planning for Freedom | p. 92 | Capital | |
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In a given economic situation, the opportunities for production, which may actually be carried out, are limited by the supply of capital goods available.
| 280 | On the Manipulation of Money and Credit | p. 125 | Capital | |
|
All capital goods sooner or later enter into final products and cease to exist through use, consumption, wear and tear.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 514; p. 517 | Capital | |
|
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.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 769; p. 775 | Capital | |
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All the effusions of the contemporary welfare school are, like those of the socialist authors, based on the implicit assumption that there is an abundant supply of capital goods. Then, of course, it seems easy to find a remedy for all ills, to give to everybody according to his needs and to make everyone perfectly happy.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 844; p. 848 | Capital | |
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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.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 844; p. 848 | Capital | |
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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.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 847; p. 851 | Capital | |
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Capital does not reproduce itself.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 177 | Capital | |
|
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.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 562; p. 565 | Capitalism | |
|
The characteristic feature of capitalism that distinguishes it from pre-capitalist methods of production was its new principle of marketing. Capitalism is not simply mass production, but mass production to satisfy the needs of the masses.
| 280 | Liberty and Property | p. 9 | Capitalism | |
|
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.
| 280 | The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality | p. 49 | Capitalism | |
|
The early industrialists were for the most part men who had their origin in the same social strata from which their workers came. They lived very modestly, spent only a fraction of their earnings for their households and put the rest back into the business.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 617; p. 622 | Capitalism | |
|
Many pioneers of these industrial changes, it is true, became rich. But they acquired their wealth by supplying the public with motor cars, airplanes, radio sets, refrigerators, moving and talking pictures, and variety of less spectacular but no less useful innovations. These new products were certainly not an achievement of offices and bureaucrats.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | pp. ixx | Capitalism | |
|
The development of capitalism consists in everyone having the right to serve the consumer better and/or more cheaply.
| 280 | Economic Policy | p. 5 | Capitalism | |
|
There is no western, capitalistic country in which the conditions of the masses have not improved in an unprecedented way.
| 280 | Economic Policy | p. 13 | Capitalism | |
|
In spite of the anticapitalistic policies of all governments and of almost all political parties, the capitalist mode of production is still fulfilling its social function in supplying the consumers with more, better and cheaper goods.
| 280 | Planned Chaos | p. 15 | Capitalism | |
|
It is inherent in the nature of the capitalistic economy that, in the final analysis, the employment of the factors of production is aimed only toward serving the wishes of consumers.
| 280 | On the Manipulation of Money and Credit | p. 176 | Capitalism | |
|
The capitalistic social order, therefore, is an economic democracy in the strictest sense of the word. In the last analysis, all decisions are dependent on the will of the people as consumers. Thus, whenever there is a conflict between the consumers views and those of the business managers, market pressures assure that the views of the consumers win out eventually.
| 280 | On the Manipulation of Money and Credit | p. 178 | Capitalism | |
|
Grumblers may blame Western civilization for its materialism and may assert that it gratified nobody but a small class of rugged exploiters. But their laments cannot wipe out the facts. Millions of mothers have been made happier by the drop in infant mortality. Famines have disappeared and epidemics have been curbed.
| 280 | Theory and History | p. 334 | Capitalism | |
|
The capitalist system of production is an economic democracy in which every penny gives a right to vote. The consumers are the sovereign people. The capitalists, the entrepreneurs, and the farmers are the peoples mandatories.
| 280 | Bureaucracy | pp. 2122 | Capitalism | |
|
Capitalism gave the world what it needed, a higher standard of living for a steadily increasing number of people.
| 280 | Human Action | pp. 860-61; p. 864 | Capitalism | |
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The word Capitalism expresses, for our age, the sum of all evil. Even the opponents of Socialism are dominated by socialist ideas.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 15 | Capitalism | |
|
In the capitalist society there is a place and bread for all. Its ability to expand provides sustenance for every worker. Permanent unemployment is not a feature of free capitalism.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 286 | Capitalism | |
|
The market economy needs no apologists and propagandists. It can apply to itself the words of Sir Christopher Wrens epitaph in St. Pauls: Si monumentum requiris, circumspice. [If you seek his monument, look around.]
| 280 | Human Action | p. 850; p. 854 | Capitalism | |
|
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.
| 280 | Economic Policy | p. 7 | Capitalism | |
|
The market economycapitalismis a social system of consumers supremacy.
| 280 | Money, Method, and the Market Process | p. 233 | Capitalism | |
|
Capitalism needs neither propaganda nor apostles. Its achievements speak for themselves. Capitalism delivers the goods.
| 280 | Money, Method, and the Market Process | p. 242 | Capitalism | |
|
The issue is always the same: the government or the market. There is no third solution.
| 280 | Planned Chaos | p. 28 | Capitalism vs. Socialism | |
|
Capitalism and socialism are two distinct patterns of social organization. Private control of the means of production and public control are contradictory notions and not merely contrary notions. There is no such thing as a mixed economy, a system that would stand midway between capitalism and socialism.
| 280 | The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality | pp. 6465 | Capitalism vs. Socialism | |
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Capitalism means free enterprise, sovereignty of the consumers in economic matters, and sovereignty of the voters in political matters. Socialism means full government control of every sphere of the individuals life and the unrestricted supremacy of the government in its capacity as central board of production management.
| 280 | Bureaucracy | p. 10 | Capitalism vs. Socialism | |
|
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.
| 280 | Planning for Freedom | p. 44 | Capitalism vs. Socialism | |
|
Tyranny is the political corollary of socialism, as representative government is the political corollary of the market economy.
| 280 | Planning for Freedom | p. 218 | Capitalism vs. Socialism | |
|
A society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not choose between two social systems; it chooses between social cooperation and the disintegration of society. Socialism is not an alternative to capitalism; it is an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 676; p. 680 | Capitalism vs. Socialism | |
|
The desire for an increase of wealth can be satisfied through exchange, which is the only method possible in a capitalist economy, or by violence and petition as in a militarist society, where the strong acquire by force, the weak by petitioning.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 335 | Capitalism vs. Socialism | |
|
For it is an essential difference between capitalist and socialist production that under capitalism men provide for themselves, while under Socialism they are provided for.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 405 | Capitalism vs. Socialism | |
|
Liberalism and capitalism address themselves to the cool, well-balanced mind. They proceed by strict logic, eliminating any appeal to the emotions. Socialism, on the contrary, works on the emotions, tries to violate logical considerations by rousing a sense of personal interest and to stifle the voice of reason by awakening primitive instincts.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 460 | Capitalism vs. Socialism | |
|
The salesman thanks the customer for patronizing his shop and asks him to come again. But the socialists say: Be grateful to Hitler, render thanks to Stalin; be nice and submissive, then the great man will be kind to you later too.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | p. 53 | Capitalism vs. Socialism | |
|
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.
| 280 | Liberalism | p. 79 | Capitalism vs. Socialism | |
|
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.
| 280 | The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science | p. 20 | Cause and Effect | |
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Everybody is free to abstain from reading books, magazines, and newspapers he dislikes and to recommend to other people to shun these books, magazines, and newspapers.
| 280 | The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality | p. 56 | Censorship | |
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The great mass of people are incapable of realizing that in economic life nothing is permanent except change. They regard the existing state of affairs as eternal; as it has been so shall it always be.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 188 | Change | |
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In life everything is continually in flux.
| 280 | Epistemological Problems of Economics | p. 108 | Change | |
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We may fully endorse the religious and ethical precepts that declare it to be mans duty to assist his unlucky brethren whom nature has doomed. But the recognition of this duty does not answer the question concerning what methods should be resorted to for its performance.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 835; p. 839 | Charity | |
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No civilized community has callously allowed the incapacitated to perish. But the substitution of a legally enforceable claim to support or sustenance for charitable relief does not seem to agree with human nature as it is... The discretion of bureaucrats is substituted for the discretion of people whom an inner voice drives to acts of charity.
| 280 | Human Action | pp. 835-36; pp. 839-40 | Charity | |
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Every sort of chauvinism is mistaken.
| 280 | Liberalism | p. 144 | Chauvinism | |
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As long as nations cling to protective tariffs, migration barriers, compulsory education, interventionism and etatism, new conflicts capable of breaking out at any time into open warfare will continually arise to plague mankind.
| 280 | Liberalism | pp. 150-51 | Chauvinism | |
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Conceit and overvaluation of ones own nation are quite common. But it would be wrong to assume that hatred and contempt of foreigners are natural and innate qualities. Even soldiers fighting to kill their enemies do not hate the individual foe, if they happen to meet him apart from the battle.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | p. 124 | Chauvinism | |
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Chauvinism has not begotten nationalism. Its chief function in the scheme of nationalist policies is to adorn the shows and festivals of nationalism. People overflow with joy and pride when the official speakers hail them as the elite of mankind and praise the immortal deeds of their ancestors and the invincibility of their armed forces. But when the words fade away and the celebration reaches its end, people return home and go to bed. They do not mount the battlehorse.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | p. 125 | Chauvinism | |
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Man is not, like the animals, an obsequious puppet of instincts and sensual impulses. Man has the power to suppress instinctive desires, he has a will of his own, he chooses between incompatible ends.
| 280 | The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science | p. 57 | Choice | |
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While all other animals are unconditionally driven by the impulse to preserve their own lives and by the impulse of proliferation, man has the power to master even these impulses. He can control both his sexual desires and his will to live. He can give up his life when the conditions under which alone he could preserve it seem intolerable. Man is capable of dying for a cause or of committing suicide. To live is for man the outcome of a choice, of a judgment of value.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 19; pp. 1920 | Choice | |
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Choosing ultimate ends is a personal, subjective, individual affair. Choosing means is a matter of reason, choosing ultimate ends a matter of the soul and the will.
| 280 | Theory and History | p. 15 | Choice | |
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Since the third century Christianity has always served simultaneously those who supported the social order and those who wished to overthrow it. . . . It is the same today: Christianity fights both for and against Socialism.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 378 | Christianity | |
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It was not the Syllabus of Pope Pius IX that paved the way for the return of intolerance and the persecution of dissenters. It was the writings of the socialists.
| 280 | Theory and History | p. 68 | Christianity | |
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Christian Socialism is none the less Socialism.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 382 | Christianity | |
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Christianity has acquiesced in slavery and polygamy, has practically canonized war, has, in the name of the Lord, burnt heretics and devastated countries.
| 280 | Socialism | pp. 397-98 | Christianity | |
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Virtually all the Christian churches and sects have espoused the principles of socialism and interventionism.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | p. 120 | Christianity | |
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Protestantism is no more a safeguard of freedom than Catholicism. The ideal of liberalism is the complete separation of church and state, and tolerance--without any regard to differences among the churches.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | p. 30 | Christianity | |
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Great Britain was not brought to socialism by the Labour government which was established in 1945. Great Britain became socialist during the war, through the government of which Sir Winston Churchill was the prime minister. The Labour government simply retained the system of socialism which the government of Sir Winston Churchill had already introduced. And this in spite of great resistance by the people.
| 280 | Economic Policy | p. 49 | Churchill, Winston | |
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Most people joined the staff of the government offices because the salary and the pension offered were higher than what they could expect to earn in other occupations. They did not renounce anything in serving the government. Civil service was for them the most profitable job they could find.
| 280 | Bureaucracy | p. 79 | Civil Service | |
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Representative democracy cannot subsist if a great part of the voters are on the government pay roll. If the members of parliament no longer consider themselves mandatories of the taxpayers but deputies of those receiving salaries, wages, subsidies, doles, and other benefits from the treasury, democracy is done for.
| 280 | Bureaucracy | p. 81 | Civil Service | |
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Experience shows that nothing is operated with less economy and with more waste of labor and material of every kind than public services and undertakings. Private enterprise on the other hand naturally induces the owner to work with the greatest economy in his own interest.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 160 | Civil Service | |
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The interventionist policy provides thousands and thousands of people with safe, placid, and not too strenuous jobs at the expense of the rest of society.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 457 | Civil Service | |
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What distinguishes civilized man from a barbarian must be acquired by every individual anew.
| 280 | Theory and History | p. 293 | Civilization | |
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What distinguishes man from animals is the insight into the advantages that can be derived from cooperation under the division of labor.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 827; p. 831 | Civilization | |
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Modern civilization is a product of the philosophy of laissez faire. It cannot be preserved under the ideology of government omnipotence.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 828; p. 832 | Civilization | |
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Civilization is a product of leisure and the peace of mind that only the division of labour can make possible.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 271 | Civilization | |
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For society is nothing but collaboration.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 281 | Civilization | |
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Civilization is a work of peaceful co-operation.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 291 | Civilization | |
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Man is born an asocial and antisocial being. The newborn child is a savage. Egoism is his nature. Only the experience of life and the teachings of his parents, his brothers, sisters, playmates, and later of other people force him to acknowledge the advantages of social cooperation and accordingly to change his behavior.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | p. 241 | Civilization | |
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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.
| 280 | Liberalism | p. 63 | Civilization | |
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Modern civilization will not perish unless it does so by its own act of self-destruction. No external enemy can destroy it.
| 280 | Liberalism | pp. 18889 | Civilization | |
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No proletarian contributed anything to the construction of antiliberal teachings. At the root of the genealogical tree of modern socialism we meet the name of the depraved scion of one of the most eminent aristocratic families of royal France.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | p. 118 | Classes | |
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It is not true that the dangers to the maintenance of peace, democracy, freedom, and capitalism are a result of a revolt of the masses. They are an achievement of scholars and intellectuals, of sons of the well-to-do, of writers and artists pampered by the best society.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | p. 119 | Classes | |
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The elite should be supreme by virtue of persuasion, not by the assistance of firing squads.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | p. 120 | Classes | |
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In the feudal society, men became rich by war and conquest and through the largess of the sovereign ruler. Men became poor if they were defeated in battle or if they fell from the monarchs good graces. In the capitalistic society, men become richdirectly as the producer of consumers goods.
| 280 | On the Manipulation of Money and Credit | pp. 177-78 | Class Mobility | |
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In the unhampered market economy there are no privileges, no protection of vested interests, no barriers preventing anybody from striving after any prize.
| 280 | Theory and History | p. 114 | Class Mobility | |
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Entrance into the ranks of the entrepreneurs in a market society, not sabotaged by the interference of government or other agencies resorting to violence, is open to everybody.
| 280 | Planning for Freedom | p. 117 | Class Mobility | |
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Under capitalism everybody is the architect of his own fortune.
| 280 | Bureaucracy | p. 100 | Class Mobility | |
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Economic knowledge necessarily leads to liberalism.
| 280 | A Critique of Interventionism | p. 86 | Classical Liberalism | |
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Several generations of economic policy which was nearly liberal have enormously increased the wealth of the world.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 13 | Classical Liberalism | |
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For Liberalism has never pretended to be more than a philosophy of earthly life. What it teaches is concerned only with earthly action and desistance from action. It has never claimed to exhaust the Last or Greatest Secret of Man.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 37 | Classical Liberalism | |
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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.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 46 | Classical Liberalism | |
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That Liberalism aims at the protection of property and that it rejects war are two expressions of one and the same principle.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 59 | Classical Liberalism | |
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The only task of the strictly Liberal state is to secure life and property against attacks both from external and internal foes.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 133 | Classical Liberalism | |
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Freedom, democracy, peace, and private property are deemed good because they are the best means for promoting human happiness and welfare. Liberalism wants to secure to man a life free from fear and want. That is all.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | p. 51 | Classical Liberalism | |
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The main excellence of the liberal scheme of social, economic, and political organization is precisely this — that it makes the peaceful cooperation of nations possible.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | p. 91 | Classical Liberalism | |
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Imagine a world order in which liberalism is supreme . . . there is private property in the means of production. The working of the market is not hampered by government interference. There are no trade barriers; men can live and work where they want.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | pp. 91-92 | Classical Liberalism | |
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To the man who adopts the scientific method in reflecting upon the problems of human action, liberalism must appear as the only policy that can lead to lasting well-being for himself, his friends, and his loved ones, and, indeed, for all others as well.
| 280 | Epistemological Problems of Economics | p. 39 | Classical Liberalism | |
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All attempts to coerce the living will of human beings into the service of something they do not want must fail.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 263 | Coercion | |
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Economic affairs cannot be kept going by magistrates and policemen.
| 280 | The Theory of Money and Credit | p. 282 | Coercion | |
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It is not mankind, the state, or the corporative unit that acts, but individual men and groups of men, and their valuations and their action are decisive, not those of abstract collectivities.
| 280 | Epistemological Problems of Economics | p. 153 | Collectivism | |
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The main characteristic of collectivism is that it does not take notice of the individuals will and moral self-determination.
| 280 | The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science | p. 106 | Collectivism | |
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Collectivism is a doctrine of war, intolerance, and persecution. If any of the collectivist creeds should succeed in its endeavors, all people but the great dictator would be deprived of their essential human quality. They would become mere soulless pawns in the hands of a monster.
| 280 | Theory and History | p. 61 | Collectivism | |
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The collectivists idolize only the one true church, only the great nation . . . only the true state; everything else they condemn. For that reason all collectivists doctrines are harbingers of irreconcilable hatred and war to the death.
| 280 | Epistemological Problems of Economics | p. 42 | Collectivism | |
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When the collectivist extols the state, what he means is not every state but only that regime of which he approves, no matter whether this legitimate state exists already or has to be created.
| 280 | Theory and History | p. 254 | Collectivism | |
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No chapter of history is steeped further in blood than the history of colonialism. Blood was shed uselessly and senselessly. Flourishing lands were laid waste; whole peoples destroyed and exterminated. All this can in no way be extenuated or justified.
| 280 | Liberalism | p. 125 | Colonialism | |
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It may be safely taken for granted that up to now the natives have learned only evil ways from the Europeans, and not good ones. This is not the fault of the natives, but rather of their European conquerors, who have taught them nothing but evil. They have brought arms and engines of destruction of all kinds to the colonies; they have sent out their worst and most brutal individuals as officials and officers; at the point of the sword they have set up a colonial rule that in its sanguinary cruelty rivals the despotic system of the Bolsheviks.
| 280 | Liberalism | p. 126 | Colonialism | |
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The marvelous achievements of the British administration in India were overshadowed by the vain arrogance and stupid race pride of the white man.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | p. 98 | Colonialism | |
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The initiative for the great colonial projects came not from finance and business but from the governments.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | p. 99 | Colonialism | |
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In regard to economic policy, socialism and communism are identical.
| 280 | Nation, State, and Economy | p. 178n | Communism | |
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A sound monetary policy is one of the foremost means to thwart the insidious schemes of communism.
| 280 | Economic Freedom and Interventionism | p. 106 | Communism | |
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Competition takes place among producers and sellers not only within each individual branch of production, but also between all related goods, and in the final analysis, between all economic goods.
| 280 | A Critique of Interventionism | p. 48 | Competition | |
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Competitors aim at excellence and preeminence in accomplishments within a system of mutual cooperation. The function of competition is to assign to every member of the social system that position in which he can best serve the whole of society and all its members.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 117; p. 117 | Competition | |
|
The sharper the competition, the better it serves its social function to improve economic production.
| 280 | A Critique of Interventionism | p. 84 | Competition | |
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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.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 285 | Competition | |
|
Class consciousness, created by the ideology of the class conflict, is the essence of the struggle, and not vice versa. The idea created the class, not the class the idea.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 306 | Conflict | |
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There are no irreconcilable conflicts between selfishness and altruism, between economics and ethics, between the concerns of the individual and those of society.
| 280 | Theory and History | pp. 54-55 | Conflict | |
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In relation to the immense sacrifices that the state demands of the individual through the blood tax, it seems rather incidental whether it compensates the soldier more or less abundantly for the loss of time that he suffers from his military-service obligation.
| 280 | Nation, State, and Economy | p. 165 | Conscription | |
|
The first step which led from the soldiers war back to total war was the introduction of compulsory military service. It gradually did away with the difference between soldiers and citizens.
| 280 | Interventionism | pp. 69-70 | Conscription | |
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Compulsory military service thus leads to compulsory labor service of all citizens who are able to work, male and female. . . . Mobilization has become total; the nation and the state have been transformed into an army; war socialism has replaced the market economy.
| 280 | Interventionism | pp. 69-70 | Conscription | |
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Great Britain would not have gone socialist if the Conservatives, not to speak of the Liberals, had not virtually endorsed socialist ideas.
| 280 | Theory and History | p. 319n | Conservatism | |
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The essence of an individuals freedom is the opportunity to deviate from traditional ways of thinking and of doing things.
| 280 | Theory and History | p. 378 | Conservatism | |
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Every conservative policy, however, is fated from the start to fail; after all, its essence is to stop something unstoppable, to resist a development that cannot be impeded.
| 280 | Nation, State, and Economy | p. 119 | Conservatism | |
|
Every reactionary lacks intellectual independence.
| 280 | Nation, State, and Economy | p. 119 | Conservatism | |
|
A return to the Middle Ages is out of the question if one is not prepared to reduce the population to a tenth or a twentieth part of its present number and, even further, to oblige every individual to be satisfied with a modicum so small as to be beyond the imagination of modern man.
| 280 | Liberalism | p. 86 | Conservatism | |
|
What transformed the stagnant conditions of the good old days into the activism of capitalism was not changes in the natural sciences and in technology, but the adoption of the free enterprise principle.
| 280 | The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science | p. 122 | Conservatism | |
|
There is really no essential difference between the unlimited power of the democratic state and the unlimited power of the autocrat.
| 280 | Socialism | pp. 64-65 | Constitutional Government | |
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The real bosses, in the capitalist system of market economy, are the consumers.
| 280 | Bureaucracy | pp. 20-21 | Consumer | |
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Those underlings who in all the preceding ages of history had formed the herds of slaves and serfs, of paupers and beggars, became the buying public, for whose favor the businessmen canvass. They are the customers who are always right, the patrons who have the power to make poor suppliers rich and rich suppliers poor.
| 280 | The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality | p. 2 | Consumer | |
|
The consumers are merciless. They never buy in order to benefit a less efficient producer and to protect him against the consequences of his failure to manage better. They want to be served as well as possible. And the working of the capitalist system forces the entrepreneur to obey the orders issued by the consumers.
| 280 | Bureaucracy | p. 37 | Consumer | |
|
Go into the home of the average American family and you will see for whom the wheels of the machines are turning.
| 280 | Liberty and Property | p. 22 | Consumer Sovereignty | |
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What vitiates entirely the socialists economic critique of capitalism is their failure to grasp the sovereignty of the consumers in the market economy.
| 280 | Liberty and Property | p. 13 | Consumer Sovereignty | |
|
The evil that a man inflicts on his fellow man injures bothnot only the one to whom it is done, but also the one who does it. Nothing corrupts a man so much as being an arm of the law and making men suffer.
| 280 | Liberalism | p. 58 | Corruption | |
|
The corruption of the regulatory bodies does not shake his blind confidence in the infallibility and perfection of the state; it merely fills him with moral aversion to entrepreneurs and capitalists.
| 280 | A Critique of Interventionism | p. 30 | Corruption | |
|
Corruption is an evil inherent in every government not controlled by a watchful public opinion.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | p. 206 | Corruption | |
|
The essence of an individuals freedom is the opportunity to deviate from traditional ways of thinking and of doing things.
| 280 | Theory and History | p. 378 | Creativity | |
|
Only the human mind that directs action and production is creative.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 141; p. 141 | Creativity | |
|
Credit transactions are in fact nothing but the exchange of present goods against future goods.
| 280 | The Theory of Money and Credit | p. 47 | Credit | |
|
Credit expansion is not a nostrum to make people happy. The boom it engenders must inevitably lead to a debacle and unhappiness.
| 280 | Planning for Freedom | p. 189 | Credit | |
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No one should expect that any logical argument or any experience could ever shake the almost religious fervor of those who believe in salvation through spending and credit expansion.
| 280 | Planning for Freedom | p. 63 | Credit | |
|
The essence of a credit-expansion boom is not overinvestment, but investment in wrong lines, i.e., malinvestment.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 556; p. 559 | Credit | |
|
What is needed for a sound expansion of production is additional capital goods, not money or fiduciary media. The credit boom is built on the sands of banknotes and deposits. It must collapse.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 559; p. 561 | Credit | |
|
If the credit expansion is not stopped in time, the boom turns into the crack-up boom; the flight into real values begins, and the whole monetary system founders.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 559; p. 562 | Credit | |
|
The final outcome of the credit expansion is general impoverishment.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 562; p. 564 | Credit | |
|
Credit expansion is the governments foremost tool in their struggle against the market economy. In their hands it is the magic wand designed to conjure away the scarcity of capital goods, to lower the rate of interest or to abolish it altogether, to finance lavish government spending, to expropriate the capitalists, to contrive everlasting booms, and to make everybody prosperous.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 788; p. 794 | Credit | |
|
Every grant of credit is a speculative entrepreneurial venture, the success or failure of which is uncertain.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 536; p. 539 | Creditors | |
|
Lenders of money have been held in odium, at all times and among all peoples.
| 280 | The Theory of Money and Credit | p. 264 | Creditors | |
|
After all, culture is wealth. Without well-being, without wealth, there never has been culture.
| 280 | Nation, State, and Economy | p. 74 | Culture | |
|
They strive for welfare and for wealth not because they see the highest value in them but because they know that all higher and inner culture presupposes outward welfare.
| 280 | Nation, State, and Economy | p. 215 | Culture | |
|
We owe the origin and development of human society and, consequently, of culture and civilization, to the fact that work performed under the division of labor is more productive than when performed in isolation.
| 280 | Epistemological Problems of Economics | p. 110 | Culture | |
|
A higher standard of living also brings about a higher standard of culture and civilization.
| 280 | Economic Policy | p. 89 | Culture | |
|
Man lives in the shadow of death. Whatever he may have achieved in the course of his pilgrimage, he must one day pass away and abandon all that he has built. Each instant can become his last. There is only one thing that is certain about the individual's future — death.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 877; p. 881 | Death | |
|
True, man cannot escape death. But for the present he is alive; and life, not death, takes hold of him... It is mans innate nature that he seeks to preserve and to strengthen his life, that he is discontented and aims at removing uneasiness, that he is in search of what may be called happiness.
| 280 | Human Action | pp. 877-78; pp. 881-82 | Death | |
|
A policy of deficit spending saps the very foundation of all interpersonal relations and contracts. It frustrates all kinds of savings, social security benefits and pensions.
| 280 | Planning for Freedom | p. 89 | Deficits | |
|
It is always an inflationist policy, not economic conditions, which bring about the monetary depreciation. The evil is philosophical in character.
| 280 | On the Manipulation of Money and Credit | p. 48 | Deficits | |
|
If one regards inflation as an evil, then one has to stop inflating. One has to balance the budget of the government.
| 280 | Economic Policy | pp. 72-73 | Deficits | |
|
If the practice persists of covering government deficits with the issue of notes, then the day will come without fail, sooner or later, when the monetary systems of those nations pursuing this course will break down completely. The purchasing power of the monetary unit will decline more and more, until finally it disappears completely.
| 280 | On the Manipulation of Money and Credit | p. 5 | Deficits | |
|
Can anyone doubt that the warring people of Europe would have tired of the conflict much sooner, if their governments had clearly, candidly, and promptly, presented them with the bill for military expenses?
| 280 | On the Manipulation of Money and Credit | p. 38 | Deficits | |
|
In public administration there is no connection between revenue and expenditure.
| 280 | Bureaucracy | p. 47 | Deficits | |
|
What the doctrine of balancing budgets over a period of many years really means is this: As long as our own party is in office, we will enhance our popularity by reckless spending.
| 280 | Planning for Freedom | p. 87 | Deficits | |
|
The two pillars of democratic government are the primacy of the law and the budget.
| 280 | Bureaucracy | p. 41 | Deficits | |
|
What the government spends more, the public spends less. Public works are not accomplished by the miraculous power of a magic wand. They are paid for by funds taken away from the citizens.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 655; p. 659 | Deficits | |
|
Democracy is not a good that people can enjoy without trouble. It is, on the contrary, a treasure that must be daily defended and conquered anew by strenuous effort.
| 280 | Bureaucracy | p. 121 | Democracy | |
|
Democracy too is not divine.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | p. 47 | Democracy | |
|
Majorities are no less exposed to error and frustration than kings and dictators. That a fact is deemed true by the majority does not prove its truth.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | p. 47 | Democracy | |
|
People can today seek salvation only in democracy, in the right of self-determination both of individuals and of nations.
| 280 | Nation, State, and Economy | p. 131 | Democracy | |
|
The prerequisite for more economic equality in the world is industrialization. And this is possible only through increased capital investment, increased capital accumulation.
| 280 | Economic Policy | p. 86 | Development | |
|
The poverty of the backward nations is due to the fact that their policies of expropriation, discriminatory taxation and foreign exchange control prevent the investment of foreign capital while their domestic policies preclude the accumulation of indigenous capital.
| 280 | The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality | p. 83 | Development | |
|
What is called the American way of life is the result of the fact that the United States has put fewer obstacles in the way of saving and capital accumulation than in other nations.
| 280 | Planning for Freedom | p. 152 | Development | |
|
It is not true that the economic backwardness of foreign countries is to be imputed to technological ignorance on the part of their peoples.
| 280 | Planning for Freedom | p. 196 | Development | |
|
It is not a lack of the know how that prevents foreign countries from fully adopting American methods of manufacturing, but the insufficiency of capital available.
| 280 | Planning for Freedom | p. 197 | Development | |
|
Capitalists have the tendency to move towards those countries in which there is plenty of labor available and in which labor is reasonable. And by the fact that they bring capital into these countries, they bring about a trend toward higher wage rates.
| 280 | Economic Policy | p. 89 | Development | |
|
Most of the tyrants, despots, and dictators are sincerely convinced that their rule is beneficial for the people, that theirs is government for the people.
| 280 | Bureaucracy | p. 43 | Dictatorship | |
|
Every dictator plans to rear, raise, feed, and train his fellow men as the breeder does his cattle. His aim is not to make the people happy but to bring them into a condition which renders him, the dictator, happy. He wants to domesticate them, to give them cattle status. The cattle breeder also is a benevolent despot.
| 280 | Bureaucracy | p. 91 | Dictatorship | |
|
Nobody ever recommended a dictatorship aiming at ends other than those he himself approved. He who advocates dictatorship always advocates the unrestricted rule of his own will.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | p. 242 | Dictatorship | |
|
Like the mystical sense of communion, racial hatred is not a natural phenomenon innate in man. It is a product of ideologies.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 168; p. 168 | Discrimination | |
|
An employer or an employee entrusted with the management of a department of an enterprise is free to discriminate in hiring workers, to fire them arbitrarily, or to cut down their wages below the market rate. But in indulging in such arbitrary acts he jeopardizes the profitability of his enterprise.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 629; p. 634 | Discrimination | |
|
True, the entrepreneur is free to give full rein to his whims, to dismiss workers off hand, to cling stubbornly to antiquated processes, deliberately to choose unsuitable methods of production and to allow himself to be guided by motives which conflict with the demands of consumers. But when and in so far as he does this he must pay for it.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 401 | Discrimination | |
|
Under the division of labor, the structure of society rests on the shoulders of all men and women.
| 280 | Bureaucracy | pp. 77-78 | Division of Labor | |
|
Every expansion of the personal division of labor brings advantages to all who take part in it.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 261 | Division of Labor | |
|
The greater productivity of work under the division of labor is a unifying influence. It leads men to regard each other as comrades in a joint struggle for welfare, rather than as competitors in a struggle for existence. It makes friends out of enemies, peace out of war, society out of individuals.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 261 | Division of Labor | |
|
Originally confined to the narrowest circles of people, to immediate neighbors, the division of labor gradually becomes more general until eventually it includes all mankind.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 279 | Division of Labor | |
|
Now the greatest accomplishment of reason is the discovery of the advantages of social cooperation, and its corollary, the division of labor.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | p. 121 | Division of Labor | |
|
Economic history is the development of the division of labor.
| 280 | Nation, State, and Economy | p. 134 | Division of Labor | |
|
It is by virtue of the division of labor that man is distinguished from the animals. It is the division of labor that has made feeble man, far inferior to most animals in physical strength, the lord of the earth and the creator of the marvels of technology.
| 280 | Liberalism | p. 18 | Division of Labor | |
|
The alcoholic and the drug addict harm only themselves by their behavior; the person who violates the rules of morality governing mans life in society harms not only himself, but everyone.
| 280 | Liberalism | p. 35 | Drugs | |
|
As soon as we surrender the principle that the state should not interfere in any questions touching on the individuals mode of life, we end by regulating and restricting the latter down to the smallest details.
| 280 | Liberalism | p. 54 | Drugs | |
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Let no one object that the struggle against morphinism and the struggle against evil literature are two quite different things. The only difference between them is that some of the same people who favor the prohibition of the former will not agree to the prohibition of the latter.
| 280 | Liberalism | p. 54 | Drugs | |
|
It is an established fact that alcoholism, cocainism, and morphinism are deadly enemies of life, of health, and of the capacity for work and enjoyment... But this is far from demonstrating that the authorities must interpose to suppress these vices by commercial prohibitions...More harmful still than all these pleasures, many will say, is the reading of evil literature.
| 280 | Liberalism | p. 53 | Drugs | |
|
As a method of economic analysis econometrics is a childish play with figures that does not contribute anything to the elucidation of the problems of economic reality.
| 280 | The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science | p. 63 | Econometrics | |
|
The specific experience with which economics and economic statistics are concerned always refers to the past. It is history, and as such does not provide knowledge about a regularity that will manifest itself also in the future.
| 280 | Epistemological Problems of Economics | p. xiv | Econometrics | |
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As there are in the field of social affairs no constant relations between magnitudes, no measurement is possible and economics can never become quantitative.
| 280 | The Theory of Money and Credit | p. 460 | Econometrics | |
|
Every quantity that we can observe is a historical event, a fact which cannot be fully described without specifying the time and geographical point. The econometrician is unable to disprove this fact, which cuts the ground from under his reasoning. He cannot help admitting that there are no behavior constants.
| 280 | Theory and History | p. 10 | Econometrics | |
|
What economic calculation requires is a monetary system whose functioning is not sabotaged by government interference.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 225; pp. 223-24 | Economic Calculation | |
|
The endeavors to expand the quantity of money in circulation either in order to increase the governments capacity to spend or in order to bring about a temporary lowering of the rate of interest disintegrate all currency matters and derange economic calculation.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 225; p. 224 | Economic Calculation | |
|
Admittedly, monetary calculation has its inconveniences and serious defects, but we have certainly nothing better to put in its place, and for the practical purposes of life monetary calculation as it exists under a sound monetary system always suffices.
| 280 | Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth | p. 25 | Economic Calculation | |
|
Economic calculation can only take place by means of money prices established in the market for production goods in a society resting on private property in the means of production.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 123 | Economic Calculation | |
|
Without the aid of monetary calculation, bookkeeping, and the computation of profit and loss in terms of money, technology would have had to confine itself to the simplest, and therefore the least productive, methods.
| 280 | Epistemological Problems of Economics | p. 157 | Economic Calculation | |
|
Monetary calculation is not the calculation, and certainly not the measurement, of value. Its basis is the comparison of the more important and the less important. It is an ordering according to rank, an act of grading, and not an act of measuring.
| 280 | Epistemological Problems of Economics | p. 160 | Economic Calculation | |
|
The problem of rendering the underdeveloped nations more prosperous cannot be solved by material aid. It is a spiritual and intellectual problem. Prosperity is not simply a matter of capital investment. It is an ideological issue. What the underdeveloped countries need first is the ideology of economic freedom and private enterprise.
| 280 | Money, Method, and the Market Process | p. 173 | Economic Development | |
|
Economic progress is the work of the savers, who accumulate capital, and of the entrepreneurs, who turn capital to new uses. The other members of society, of course, enjoy the advantages of progress, but they not only do not contribute anything to it; they even place obstacles in its way.
| 280 | Epistemological Problems of Economics | p. 228 | Economic Progress | |
|
Economics is not about goods and services; it is about human choice and action.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 491; p. 494 | Economics | |
|
Economics must not be relegated to classrooms and statistical offices and must not be left to esoteric circles. It is the philosophy of human life and action and concerns everybody and everything. It is the pith of civilization and of mans human existence.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 874; p. 878 | Economics | |
|
The economist must never be a specialist. In dealing with any problem he must always fix his glance upon the whole system.
| 280 | Austrian Economics: An Anthology | p. 157 | Economics | |
|
Despots and democratic majorities are drunk with power. They must reluctantly admit that they are subject to the laws of nature. But they reject the very notion of economic law . . . economic history is a long record of government policies that failed because they were designed with a bold disregard for the laws of economics.
| 280 | Austrian Economics: An Anthology | p. 155 | Economics | |
|
The unpopularity of economics is the result of its analysis of the effects of privileges. It is impossible to invalidate the economists demonstration that all privileges hurt the interests of the rest of the nation or at least a great part of it.
| 280 | Austrian Economics: An Anthology | p. 58 | Economics | |
|
The social function of economic science consists precisely in developing sound economic theories and in exploding the fallacies of vicious reasoning. In the pursuit of this task the economist incurs the deadly enmity of all mountebanks and charlatans whose shortcuts to an earthly paradise he debunks.
| 280 | Economic Freedom and Interventionism | pp. 51-52 | Economics | |
|
All those not familiar with economics (i.e., the immense majority) do not see any reason why they should not coerce other people by means of force to do what these people are not prepared to do of their own accord.
| 280 | Austrian Economics: An Anthology | p. 75 | Economics | |
|
The main achievement of economics is that it has provided a theory of peaceful human cooperation. This is why the harbingers of violent conflict have branded it as a dismal science and why this age of wars, civil wars, and destruction has no use for it.
| 280 | Economic Freedom and Interventionism | p. 235 | Economics | |
|
No very deep knowledge of economics is usually needed for grasping the immediate effects of a measure; but the task of economics is to foretell the remoter effects, and so to allow us to avoid such acts as attempt to remedy a present ill by sowing the seeds of a much greater ill for the future.
| 280 | The Theory of Money and Credit | p. 23 | Economics | |
|
This dilettantish inability to comprehend the essential issues of the conduct of production affairs is not only manifested in the writings of Marx and Engels. It permeates no less the contributions of contemporary pseudo-economics.
| 280 | Planning for Freedom | p. 147 | Economics | |
|
But for a few dozen individuals all over the globe are cognizant of economics, and no statesman or politician cares about it.
| 280 | A Critique of Interventionism | p. 106 | Economics | |
|
Rulers do not like to admit that their power is restricted by any laws other than those of physics and biology. They never ascribe their failures and frustrations to the violation of economic law.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 756; p. 762 | Economics | |
|
The development of a profession of economists is an offshoot of interventionism. The professional economist is the specialist who is instrumental in designing various measures of government interference with business. He is an expert in the field of economic legislation, which today invariably aims at hindering the operation of the market economy.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 865; p. 869 | Economics | |
|
As conditions are today, nothing can be more important to every intelligent man than economics. His own fate and that of his progeny is at stake.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 875; p. 878 | Economics | |
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Whether we like it or not, it is a fact that economics cannot remain an esoteric branch of knowledge accessible only to small groups of scholars and specialists. Economics deals with societys fundamental problems; it concerns everyone and belongs to all. It is the main and proper study of every citizen.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 875; p. 879 | Economics | |
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The study of economics has been again and again led astray by the vain idea that economics must proceed according to the pattern of other sciences.
| 280 | The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science | p. 3 | Economics | |
|
Economics is not specifically about business; it deals with all market phenomena and with all their aspects, not only with the activities of a businessman.
| 280 | The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science | p. 77 | Economics | |
|
Everything that we say about action is independent of the motives that cause it and of the goals toward which it strives in the individual case.
| 280 | Epistemological Problems of Economics | p. 34 | Economics | |
|
Only by letting fall morsels of statistics is it possible for the economic theorist to maintain his prestige.
| 280 | The Theory of Money and Credit | p. 216 | Economics | |
|
In all ages the pioneer in scientific thought has been a solitary thinker. But never has the position of the scientist been more solitary than in the field of modern economics.
| 280 | Epistemological Problems of Economics | p. 202 | Economics | |
|
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.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 885 | Economics | |
|
There is, in fact, in the writings and teaching of those who nowadays call themselves economists, no longer any comprehension of the operation of the economic system as such.
| 280 | Economic Freedom and Interventionism | p. 154 | Economists | |
|
In the same way in which it is impossible for a mathematician to specialize in triangles and to neglect the study of circles, it is impossible to be an expert on wage rates without at the same time mastering the problems of profits and interest, commodity prices, and currency and banking.
| 280 | Economic Freedom and Interventionism | p. 234 | Economists | |
|
There is, in fact, only one solution: the state, the government, the laws must not in any way concern themselves with schooling or education. Public funds must not be used for such purposes. The rearing and instruction of youth must be left entirely to parents and to private associations and institutions.
| 280 | Liberalism | p. 115 | Education | |
|
European totalitarianism is an upshot of bureaucracys preeminence in the field of education. The universities paved the way for the dictators.
| 280 | Bureaucracy | p. 87 | Education | |
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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.
| 280 | Planning for Freedom | p. 162 | Education | |
|
Tax-supported universities are under the sway of the party in power. The authorities try to appoint only professors who are ready to advance ideas of which they themselves approve.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 868; p. 872 | Education | |
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The majority of the students espouse without any inhibitions the interventionist panaceas recommended by their professors.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 871; p. 875 | Education | |
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What is wrong with the discipline that is nowadays taught in most universities under the misleading label of economics is not that the teachers and the authors of the textbooks are either not businessmen or failed in their business enterprises. The fault is with their ignorance of economics and with their inability to think logically.
| 280 | The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science | p. 78 | Education | |
|
Continued adherence to a policy of compulsory education is utterly incompatible with efforts to establish lasting peace.
| 280 | Liberalism | p. 114 | Education | |
|
Western Europe developed the system of obligatory public education. It came to Eastern Europe as an achievement of Western civilization. But in the linguistically mixed territories it turned into a dreadful weapon in the hands of governments.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | pp. 82-83 | Education | |
|
The modern American high school, reformed according to the principles of John Dewey, has failed lamentably, as all competent experts agree, in the teaching of mathematics, physics, languages, and history.
| 280 | Economic Freedom and Interventionism | p. 171 | Education | |
|
Innovators and creative geniuses cannot be reared in schools. They are precisely the men who defy what the school has taught them.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 311 p. 314 | Education | |
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Education rears disciples, imitators, and routinists, not pioneers of new ideas and creative geniuses. . . . The mark of the creative mind is that it defies a part of what it has learned or, at least, adds something new to it.
| 280 | Bureaucracy | p. 71 | Education | |
|
The horrors of revolution and civil war can be avoided if a disliked government can be smoothly dislodged at the next election.
| 280 | The Historical Setting of the Austrian School | p. 35 | Elections | |
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The planning businessman cannot help employing data concerning the unknown future; he deals with future prices and future costs of production.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 225; p. 224 | Entrepreneurs | |
|
The entrepreneurs . . . are not infallible and often blunder. But they are less liable to error, and blunder less than other people do.
| 280 | Planning for Freedom | p. 114 | Entrepreneurs | |
|
A technological invention is not something material. It is the product of a mental process, of reasoning and conceiving new ideas. The tools and machines may be called material, but the operation of the mind which created them is certainly spiritual.
| 280 | Theory and History | p. 109 | Entrepreneurs | |
|
The only source from which an entrepreneurs profits stem is his ability to anticipate better than other people the future demand of the consumers.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 288; p. 290 | Entrepreneurs | |
|
The task of the entrepreneur is to select from the multitude of technologically feasible projects those which will satisfy the most urgent of the not yet satisfied needs of the public.
| 280 | Planning for Freedom | p. 117 | Entrepreneurs | |
|
What distinguishes the successful entrepreneur and promoter from other people is precisely the fact that he does not let himself be guided by what was and is, but arranges his affairs on the ground of his opinion about the future. He sees the past and the present as other people do; but he judges the future in a different way.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 582; p. 585 | Entrepreneurs | |
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No dullness and clumsiness on the part of the masses can stop the pioneers of improvement. There is no need for them to win the approval of inert people beforehand. They are free to embark upon their projects even if everyone else laughs at them.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 859; p. 863 | Entrepreneurs | |
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An entrepreneur cannot be trained.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 311 p. 314 | Entrepreneurs | |
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Man is the only animal that is able, within definite limits, to adjust his environment purposively to suit him better.
| 280 | The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science | p. 8 | Environment | |
|
It is vain to provide for the needs of ages the technological abilities of which we cannot even dream.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 383; p. 386 | Environment | |
|
Talk about the magnificence of untouched nature is idle if it does not take into account what man has got by desecrating nature.
| 280 | Theory and History | pp. 218-19 | Environment | |
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The masses do not like those who surpass them in any regard. The average man envies and hates those who are different.
| 280 | The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science | p. 123 | Envy | |
|
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. . . . There will no longer be any room left for innovators and reformers.
| 280 | The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science | p. 123 | Envy | |
|
Nobody seems to doubt that to prevent some people from acquiring riches is a policy extremely beneficial for the rest of society.
| 280 | Economic Freedom and Interventionism | pp. 23132 | Envy | |
|
Nothing, however, is as ill founded as the assertion of the alleged equality of all members of the human race.
| 280 | Liberalism | p. 28 | Equality | |
|
Collaboration of the more talented, more able, and more industrious with the less talented, less able, and less industrious results in benefit for both. The gains derived from the division of labor are always mutual.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 159; p. 160 | Equality | |
|
The heir of a wealthy man [undoubtedly] enjoys a certain advantage as he starts under more favorable conditions than others.
| 280 | The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality | pp. 4041 | Equality | |
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The egalitarian doctrine is manifestly contrary to all the facts established by biology and by history. Only fanatical partisans of this theory can contend that what distinguishes the genius from the dullard is entirely the effect of postnatal influences.
| 280 | Theory and History | p. 331 | Equality | |
|
We cannot really say any more about the inherited characteristics of the individual than that some men are more gifted from birth than others. Where the difference between good and bad is to be sought we cannot say.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 288 | Equality | |
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Men are unequal; individuals differ from one another. They differ because their prenatal as well as their postnatal history is never identical.
| 280 | The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science | p. 59 | Equality | |
|
In talking about equality and asking vehemently for its realization, nobody advocates a curtailment of his own present income.
| 280 | Planning for Freedom | p. 137 | Equality | |
|
What those people who ask for equality have in mind is always an increase in their own power to consume.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 836; p. 840 | Equality | |
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The idea of equal distribution of land is a pernicious illusion. Its execution would plunge mankind into misery and starvation, and would in fact wipe out civilization itself.
| 280 | Theory and History | p. 354 | Equality | |
|
It is only the passionate pro-socialist zeal of mathematical pseudo-economists that transforms a purely analytical tool of logical economics into an utopian image of the good and most desirable state of affairs.
| 280 | Theory and History | p. 367 | Equilibrium | |
|
If the goal of the Pan-European movement could be achieved, the world would not be in the least the better for it. The struggle of a united European continent against the great world powers outside its territory would be no less ruinous than is the present struggle of the countries of Europe among themselves.
| 280 | Liberalism | p. 147 | Europe | |
|
If one wants to study the reasons for Europes backwardness, it would be necessary to examine the manifold laws and regulations that prevented in Europe the establishment of an equivalent of the American drug store and crippled the evolution of chain stores, department stores, super markets and kindred outfits.
| 280 | Planning for Freedom | p. 136 | Europe | |
|
The only way to counteract tendencies toward protectionism and autarky is to recognize their harmfulness and to appreciate the harmony of the interests of all nations.
| 280 | Liberalism | pp. 146-47 | Europe | |
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All human action, so far as it is rational, appears as the exchange of one condition for another... This is the essence of economic activity--the carrying out of acts of exchange.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 97 | Exchange | |
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Each party attaches a higher value to the good he receives than to that he gives away. The exchange ratio, the price, is not the product of an equality of valuation, but, on the contrary, the product of a discrepancy in valuation.
| 280 | Human Action | pp. 328-29; p. 331 | Exchange | |
|
There are in the market economy no conflicts between the interests of the buyers and sellers.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 661; p. 665 | Exchange | |
|
The deal is always advantageous both for the buyer and the seller. Even a man who sells at a loss is still better off than he would be if he could not sell at all, or only at a still lower price.
| 280 | Human Action | pp. 661-62; pp. 665-66 | Exchange | |
|
He [a consumer] buys because he believes that to acquire the merchandise in question will satisfy him better than keeping the money or spending it for something else.
| 280 | The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science | p. 76 | Exchange | |
|
In a game there are winners and losers. But a business deal is always advantageous for both parties. If both the buyer and the seller were not to consider the transaction as the most advantageous action they could choose under the prevailing conditions, they would not enter into the deal.
| 280 | The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science | p. 90 | Exchange | |
|
The valuation of a monetary unit depends not on the wealth of a country, but rather on the relationship between the quantity of, and demand for, money. Thus, even the richest country can have a bad currency and the poorest a good one.
| 280 | On the Manipulation of Money and Credit | p. 21 | Exchange | |
|
There is neither constancy nor continuity in the valuations and in the formation of exchange ratios between various commodities. Every new datum brings about a reshuffling of the whole price structure.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 118; p. 118 | Expectations | |
|
Experience is a mental act on the part of thinking and acting men.
| 280 | The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science | p. 15 | Experience | |
|
Experience tells us something we did not know before and could not learn but for having had the experience.
| 280 | The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science | p. 18 | Experience | |
|
New experience can force us to discard or modify inferences we have drawn from previous experience.
| 280 | Epistemological Problems of Economics | p. 27 | Experience | |
|
The concept of a just or fair price is devoid of any scientific meaning; it is a disguise for wishes, a striving for a state of affairs different from reality.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 329; p. 332 | Fairness | |
|
To the grumbler who complains about the unfairness of the market system only one piece of advice can be given: If you want to acquire wealth, then try to satisfy the public by offering them something that is cheaper or which they like better. Try to supersede Pinkapinka by mixing another beverage. Equality under the law gives you the power to challenge every millionaire. It isin a market not sabotaged by government-imposed restrictionsexclusively your fault if you do not outstrip the chocolate king, the movie star and the boxing champion.
| 280 | The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality | pp. 910. | Fairness | |
|
Daydreams of a fair world which would treat him according to his real worth are the refuge of all those plagued by a lack of self-knowledge.
| 280 | The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality | p. 15 | Fairness | |
|
It is not in the power of the government to make everybody more prosperous.
| 280 | Bureaucracy | p. 84 | Farm Programs | |
|
The boon of these privileged farmers is paid for by the taxpayers who must provide the funds required to defray the deficit. It affects neither the market price nor the total available supply of agricultural products. It merely makes profitable the operation of farms which hitherto were submarginal.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 656; p. 660 | Farm Programs | |
|
If Dante, Shakespeare, or Beethoven had died in childhood, mankind would miss what it owes to them. In this sense we may say that chance plays a role in human affairs.
| 280 | The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science | p. 61 | Fate | |
|
There always remains an orbit that to the limited knowledge of man appears as an orbit of pure chance and marks life as a gamble. Man and his works are always exposed to the impact of unforeseen and uncontrollable events.
| 280 | The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science | pp. 65-66 | Fate | |
|
Even knowledge of the laws of nature does not make action free. It is never able to attain more than definite, limited ends. It can never go beyond the insurmountable barriers set for it. And even within the sphere allowed to it, it must always reckon with the inroads of uncontrollable forces, with fate.
| 280 | Epistemological Problems of Economics | p. 198 | Fate | |
|
Seen from the formalistic viewpoint of constitutional law, the United States and the Swiss Confederation may doubtless still be classified as federations, but in actual fact they are moving more and more toward centralization.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | p. 268 | Federalism | |
|
So far as Feminism seeks to adjust the legal position of woman to that of man, so far as it seeks to offer her legal and economic freedom to develop and act in accordance with her inclinations, desires, and economic circumstancesso far it is nothing more than a branch of the great liberal movement, which advocates peaceful and free evolution.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 87 | Feminism | |
|
It is not exclusively to the interest of woman that she should succeed in this struggle; to contrast the interests of men and women, as extreme feminists try to do, is very foolish. All mankind would suffer if woman should fail to develop her ego and be unable to unite with man as equal, freeborn companions and comrades.
| 280 | Socialism | pp. 90-91 | Feminism | |
|
How pale is the art of sorcerers, witches, and conjurors when compared with that of the government's Treasury Department!
| 280 | The Theory of Money and Credit | p. 458 | Fiat Money | |
|
The worst method to fight communism is that of the Marshall Plan…. The American subsidies make it possible for their governments to conceal partially the disastrous effects of the various socialist measures they have adopted.
| 280 | Planning for Freedom | pp. 141-42 | Foreign Aid | |
|
We must comprehend that it is impossible to improve the economic conditions of the underdeveloped nations by grants in aid. If we send them foodstuffs to fight famines, we merely relieve their governments from the necessity of abandoning their disastrous agricultural policies.
| 280 | Money, Method, and the Market Process | p. 172 | Foreign Aid | |
|
The truth is that the United States is subsidizing all over the world the worst failure of history: socialism. But for these lavish subsidies the continuation of the socialist schemes would have become long since unfeasible.
| 280 | Money, Method, and the Market Process | p. 173 | Foreign Aid | |
|
Capitalists have the tendency to move towards 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.
| 280 | Economic Policy | p. 89 | Foreign Capital | |
|
The enormous transfer of capital from Western Europe to the rest of the world was one of the outstanding events of the age of capitalism. It has developed natural resources in the remotest areas. It has raised the standard of living of peoples who from time immemorial had not achieved any improvement in their material conditions.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | p. 102 | Foreign Capital | |
|
This throttling of international credit can hardly be remedied otherwise than by setting aside the principle that it lies within the discretion of every government . . . to stop paying interest to foreign countries and also to prohibit interest and amortization payments on the part of its subjects.
| 280 | The Theory of Money and Credit | pp. 2829 | Foreign Capital | |
|
Foreign-exchange control is today primarily a device for the virtual expropriation of foreign investments. It has destroyed the international capital and money market.
| 280 | The Theory of Money and Credit | p. 476 | Foreign Exchange | |
|
There is no kind of freedom and liberty other than the kind which the market economy brings about. In a totalitarian hegemonic society the only freedom that is left to the individual, because it cannot be denied to him, is the freedom to commit suicide.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 280; p. 283 | Free Market | |
|
What gives to the individuals as much freedom as is compatible with life in society is the operation of the market economy. The constitutions and bills of rights do not create freedom.
| 280 | The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality | pp. 99-100 | Free Market | |
|
The market is a democracy in which every penny gives a right to vote.
| 280 | Planned Chaos | pp. 25-26 | Free Market | |
|
The market economy safeguards peaceful economic cooperation because it does not use force upon the economic plans of the citizens. If one masterplan is to be substituted for the plans of each citizen, endless fighting must emerge.
| 280 | Planned Chaos | p. 30 | Free Market | |
|
The market economy is the social system of the division of labor under private ownership of the means of production. Everybody acts on his own behalf; but everybodys actions aim at the satisfaction of other peoples needs as well as at the satisfaction of his own. Everybody in acting serves his fellow citizens.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 258; p. 257 | Free Market | |
|
Liberty and freedom are the conditions of man within a contractual society.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 280; p. 282 | Free Market | |
|
The market steers the capitalistic economy. It directs each individuals activities into those channels in which he best serves the wants of his fellow-men. The market alone puts the whole social system of private ownership of the means of production and free enterprise in order and provides it with sense and meaning.
| 280 | Planning for Freedom | p. 72 | Free Market | |
|
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.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 384; p. 387 | Free Market | |
|
The market economy was not devised by a master mind; it was not first planned as an utopian scheme and then put to work.
| 280 | The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science | p. 109 | Free Market | |
|
Free trade begins at home.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | p. 237 | Free Trade | |
|
In our age of international division of labor, free trade is the prerequisite for any amicable arrangement between nations.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | p. 6 | Free Trade | |
|
History is a struggle between two principles, the peaceful principle, which advances the development of trade, and the militarist-imperialist principle, which interprets human society not as a friendly division of labour but as the forcible repression of some of its members by others.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 268 | Free Trade | |
|
If trade were completely free, production would only take place under the most suitable conditions.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 201 | Free Trade | |
|
It is inconsistent to support a policy of low trade barriers. Either trade barriers are useful, then they cannot be high enough; or they are harmful, then they have to disappear completely.
| 280 | Money, Method, and the Market Process | pp. 13536 | Free Trade | |
|
It is hopeless to expect a change by an international agreement. If a country thinks that more free trade is to its own advantage, then it may always open its frontiers.
| 280 | Money, Method, and the Market Process | p. 136 | Free Trade | |
|
The distinction between an economic sphere of human life and activity and a noneconomic sphere is the worst of their fallacies.
| 280 | Theory and History | pp. 37677 | Freedom | |
|
Freedom must be granted to all, even to base people, lest the few who can use it for the benefit of mankind be hindered.
| 280 | The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality | p. 108 | Freedom | |
|
As soon as the economic freedom which the market economy grants to its members is removed, all political liberties and bills of rights become humbug.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 284; p. 287 | Freedom | |
|
Freedom is indivisible. As soon as one starts to restrict it, one enters upon a decline on which it is difficult to stop.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 319; p. 322 | Freedom | |
|
The idea that political freedom can be preserved in the absence of economic freedom, and vice versa, is an illusion. Political freedom is the corollary of economic freedom.
| 280 | Planning for Freedom | p. 38 | Freedom | |
|
The characteristic feature of a free society is that it can function in spite of the fact that its members disagree in many judgments of value.
| 280 | Theory and History | p. 61 | Freedom | |
|
Freedom in society means that a man depends as much upon other people as other people depend on him.
| 280 | Economic Policy | p. 19 | Freedom | |
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Freedom really means the freedom to make mistakes.
| 280 | Economic Policy | p. 22 | Freedom | |
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Many of our contemporaries are firmly convinced that what is needed to render all human affairs perfectly satisfactory is brutal suppression of all bad people, i.e., of those with whom they disagree.
| 280 | The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science | p. 95 | Freedom | |
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This, then, is freedom in the external life of manthat he is independent of the arbitrary power of his fellows. Such freedom is no natural right. It did not exist under primitive conditions. It arose in the process of social development and its final completion is the work of mature Capitalism.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 171 | Freedom | |
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When men have gained freedom in purely economic relationships they begin to desire it elsewhere.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 171 | Freedom | |
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The only true national autonomy is the freedom of the individual against the state and society.
| 280 | Nation, State, and Economy | p. 96 | Freedom | |
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As soon as we surrender the principle that the state should not interfere in any questions touching on the individuals mode of life, we end by regulating and restricting the latter down to the smallest detail.
| 280 | Liberalism | p. 54 | Freedom | |
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The meaning of economic freedom is this: that the individual is in a position to choose the way in which he wants to integrate himself into the totality of society.
| 280 | Economic Policy | p. 17 | Freedom | |
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Liberty and freedom are the conditions of man within a contractual society.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 282 | Freedom | |
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Where there is no market economy, the best-intentioned provisions of constitutions and laws remain a dead letter.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 283; p. 285 | Freedom | |
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The freedom of man under capitalism is an effect of competition.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 283; p. 285 | Freedom | |
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A free press can exist only where there is private control on the means of production.
| 280 | The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality | p. 55 | Freedom of The Press | |
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It was in the climate created by this capitalistic system of individualism that all the modern intellectual achievements thrived.
| 280 | The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science | p. 123 | Freedom of Thought | |
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Nothing suggests the belief that progress toward more satisfactory conditions is inevitable or a relapse into very unsatisfactory conditions impossible.
| 280 | Human Action | pp. 856-57; p. 861 | Future | |
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Rhetorical bombast, music and song resound, banners wave, flowers and colors serve as symbols, and the leaders seek to attach their followers to their own person. Liberalism has nothing to do with all this. It has no party flower and no party color, no party song and no party idols, no symbols and no slogans. It has the substance and the arguments. These must lead it to victory.
| 280 | Liberalism | p. 193 | Future | |
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Therefore nothing is more important today than to enlighten public opinion about the basic differences between genuine Liberalism, which advocates the free market economy, and the various interventionist parties which are advocating government interference.
| 280 | Economic Freedom and Interventionism | p. 244 | Future | |
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Mahatma Gandhi expresses a loathing for the devices of the petty West and of devilish capitalism. But he travels by railroad or by motor car and, when ill, goes for treatment to a hospital equipped with the most refined instruments of Western surgery.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | p. 102 | Gandhi | |
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In all nations and in all periods of history, intellectual exploits were the work of a few men and were appreciated only by a small elite. The many looked upon these feats with hatred and disdain, at best with indifference.
| 280 | Austrian Economics: An Anthology | p. 58 | Genius | |
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Everything that is thought, done and accomplished is a performance of individuals. New ideas and innovations are always an achievement of uncommon men.
| 280 | Human Action | pp. 859-60; p. 863 | Genius | |
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Genius does not allow itself to be hindered by any consideration for the comfort of its fellowseven of those closest to it.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 85 | Genius | |
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The creative spirit innovates necessarily. It must press forward. It must destroy the old and set the new in its place…. Progress cannot be organized.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 167 | Genius | |
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To see and to act in advance, to follow new ways, is always the concern only of the few, the leaders.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 188 | Genius | |
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It is characteristic of very great persons to move forward to highest accomplishment out of an inner drive; others require an external impulse to overcome deep-rooted inertia and to develop their own selves.
| 280 | Nation, State, and Economy | p. 213 | Genius | |
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What counts is not the data, but the mind that deals with them…. Galileo was certainly not the first to observe the swinging motion of the chandelier in the cathedral at Pisa.
| 280 | Epistemological Problems of Economics | p. 71 | Genius | |
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It is merely the routine of scientific procedure that can be taught and presented in textbooks. The power to accomplish feats of scientific achievement can be awakened only in one who already possesses the necessary intellectual gifts and strength of character.
| 280 | Epistemological Problems of Economics | pp. 7172 | Genius | |
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The first thing a genius needs is to breathe free air.
| 280 | The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality | p. 108 | Genius | |
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Genius does not allow itself to be hindered by any consideration for the comfort of its fellowseven of those closest to it.
| 280 | Socialism | pp. 85-86 | Genius | |
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Friedrich Wilhelm IV and Wilhelm II were quite convinced that God had invested them with special authority. . . . Many contemporaries believed alike and were ready to spend their last drop of blood in the service of the king sent to them by God.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 56 | God | |
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But for an almighty supreme being there cannot be any dissatisfaction with the prevailing state of affairs. The Almighty does not act, because there is no state of affairs that he cannot render fully satisfactory without any action.
| 280 | The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science | p. 3 | God | |
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Every nation, whether rich or poor, powerful or feeble, can at any hour once again adopt the gold standard.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | p. 252 | Gold Standard | |
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The gold standard has one tremendous virtue: the quantity of the money supply, under the gold standard, is independent of the policies of governments and political parties. This is its advantage. It is a form of protection against spendthrift governments.
| 280 | Economic Policy | p. 65 | Gold Standard | |
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The superiority of the gold standard consists in the fact that the value of gold develops independent of political actions.
| 280 | On the Manipulation of Money and Credit | p. 90 | Gold Standard | |
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The gold standard alone makes the determination of moneys purchasing power independent of the ambitions and machinations of governments, of dictators, of political parties, and of pressure groups.
| 280 | Planning for Freedom | p. 185 | Gold Standard | |
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Governments deliberately sabotaged it, and still go on sabotaging it.
| 280 | Planning for Freedom | p. 185 | Gold Standard | |
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Under the gold standard gold is money and money is gold. It is immaterial whether or not the laws assign legal tender quality only to gold coins minted by the government.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 425; pp. 428-29 | Gold Standard | |
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. The use of money in a market economy is a praxeologically necessary fact. That gold, and not something else, is used as money is merely a historical fact and as such cannot be conceived by catallactics.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 468; p. 471 | Gold Standard | |
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The gold standard was the world standard of the age of capitalism, increasing welfare, liberty, and democracy, both political and economic.
| 280 | Human Action | pp. 469-70; pp. 47273 | Gold Standard | |
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All those intent upon sabotaging the evolution toward welfare, peace, freedom, and democracy loathed the gold standard, and not only on account of its economic significance.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 470; p. 473 | Gold Standard | |
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The return to gold does not depend on the fulfillment of some material condition. It is an ideological problem. It presupposes only one thing: the abandonment of the illusion that increasing the quantity of money creates prosperity.
| 280 | Economic Freedom and Interventionism | p. 86 | Gold Standard | |
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The excellence of the gold standard is to be seen in the fact that it renders the determination of the monetary units purchasing power independent of the policies of governments and political parties.
| 280 | The Theory of Money and Credit | p. 456 | Gold Standard | |
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The gold standard did not collapse. Governments abolished it in order to pave the way for inflation. The whole grim apparatus of oppression and coercion, policemen, customs guards, penal courts, prisons, in some countries even executioners, had to be put into action in order to destroy the gold standard.
| 280 | The Theory of Money and Credit | p. 461 | Gold Standard | |
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The classical or orthodox gold standard alone is a truly effective check on the power of the government to inflate the currency. Without such a check all other constitutional safeguards can be rendered vain.
| 280 | The Theory of Money and Credit | p. 495 | Gold Standard | |
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If we had gold coins in actual daily circulation everywhere in the world . . . the depreciation of gold would . . . not have taken place at all.
| 280 | Money, Method, and the Market Process | p. 84 | Gold Standard | |
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All that good government can do to improve the material well-being of the masses is to establish and to preserve an institutional setting in which there are no obstacles to the progressive accumulation of new capital and its utilization for the improvement of technical methods of production.
| 280 | Planning for Freedom | p. 6 | Good Government | |
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Government ought to protect the individuals within the country against the violent and fraudulent attacks of gangsters, and it should defend the country against foreign enemies.
| 280 | Economic Policy | p. 37 | Good Government | |
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Governments become liberal only when forced to by the citizens.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | p. 58 | Good Government | |
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Whoever wants lastingly to establish good government must start by trying to persuade his fellow citizens and offering them sound ideologies. . . . There is no hope left for a civilization when the masses favor harmful policies.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | p. 120 | Good Government | |
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The role which good will plays on the market does not impair or restrict competition. Everybody is free to acquire good will, and every bearer of good will can lose good will once acquired.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 377; p. 380 | Good Will | |
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Government is essentially the negation of liberty.
| 280 | Liberty and Property | p. 19 | Government | |
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Government is not, as some people like to say, a necessary evil; it is not an evil, but a means, the only means available to make peaceful human coexistence possible. But it is the opposite of liberty. It is beating, imprisoning, hanging. Whatever a government does it is ultimately supported by the actions of armed constables. If the government operates a school or a hospital, the funds required are collected by taxes, i.e., by payments exacted from the citizens.
| 280 | Liberty and Property | p. 19 | Government | |
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Government means always coercion and compulsion and is by necessity the opposite of liberty.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 283; p. 285 | Government | |
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History provides an abundance of striking examples to show that, in the long run, even the most ruthless policy of repression does not suffice to maintain a government in power.
| 280 | Liberalism | p. 45 | Government | |
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It is an illusion to expect that despotism will always side with the good causes.
| 280 | Theory and History | p. 372 | Government | |
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It is in the nature of the men handling the apparatus of compulsion and coercion to overrate its power to work, and to strive at subduing all spheres of human life to its immediate influence.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | p. 58 | Government | |
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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.
| 280 | Bureaucracy | p. 84 | Government | |
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The government and its chiefs do not have the powers of the mythical Santa Claus. They cannot spend except by taking out of the pockets of some people for the benefit of others.
| 280 | Planning for Freedom | p. 187 | Government | |
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A liberal government is a contradictio in adjecto. Governments must be forced into adopting liberalism by the power of the unanimous opinion of the people; that they could voluntarily become liberal is not to be expected.
| 280 | Liberalism | p. 68 | Government | |
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Politically there is nothing more advantageous for a government than an attack on property rights, for it is always an easy matter to incite the masses against the owners of land and capital. .
| 280 | Liberalism | p. 69 | Government | |
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In spite of all persecutions, however, the institution of private property has survived. Neither the animosity of all governments, nor the hostile campaign waged against it by writers and moralists and by churches and religions, nor the resentment of the masses...has availed to abolish it.
| 280 | Liberalism | p. 69 | Government | |
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Daily experience proves clearly to everybody but the most bigoted fanatics of socialism that governmental management is inefficient and wasteful.
| 280 | Economic Freedom and Interventionism | p. 62 | Government | |
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There is no remedy for the inefficiency of public management.
| 280 | Economic Freedom and Interventionism | p. 63 | Government | |
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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.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 283 | Government | |
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Once the principle is admitted that it is duty of government to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments.
| 280 | Human Action | pp. 728-29 p. 733 | Government | |
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The macroeconomic concept of national income is a mere political slogan devoid of any cognitive value.
| 280 | The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science | p. 87 | Gross National Product | |
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Every collectivist assumes a different source for the collective will, according to his own political, religious and national convictions.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 56 | Groups | |
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Man is not the member of one group only and does not appear on the scene of human affairs solely in the role of a member of one definitive group.
| 280 | Theory and History | p. 257 | Groups | |
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Every act of the government which can and must be done by administrative discretion with regard to the special merits of each case can be used for the achievement of the governments political aims.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | p. 83 | Guns | |
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Men cannot be made happy against their will.
| 280 | Liberalism | p. 46 | Happiness | |
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Nobody is in a position to decree what should make a fellow man happier.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 14; p. 14 | Happiness | |
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Each individual is the only and final arbiter in matters concerning his own satisfaction and happiness.
| 280 | Theory and History | p. 13 | Happiness | |
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Nobody is called upon to determine what could make another man happier or less unhappy.
| 280 | Planning for Freedom | p. 118 | Happiness | |
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You do not increase the happiness of a man eager to attend a performance of Abies Irish Rose by forcing him to attend a perfect performance of Hamlet instead. You may deride his poor taste. But he alone is supreme in matters of his own satisfaction.
| 280 | Bureaucracy | pp. 9091 | Happiness | |
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There is no means of comparing and measuring the happiness of different people and of the same people at different times.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 617; p. 621 | Happiness | |
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If a man drinks wine and not water I cannot say he is acting irrationally. At most I can say that in his place I would not do so. But his pursuit of happiness is his own business, not mine.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 405 | Happiness | |
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Man is not evil merely because he wants to enjoy pleasure and avoid painin other words, to live. Renunciation, abnegation, and self-sacrifice are not good in themselves.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 409 | Happiness | |
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There is no clearly defined frontier between health and illness. Being ill is not a phenomenon independent of conscious will and of psychic forces working in the subconscious. A man's efficiency is not merely the result of his physical condition; it depends largely on his mind and will.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 431 | Health | |
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As for the German historians, I found fault in their crude and materialistic position on power. To them power meant bayonets and cannons, and realistic policies were those relying solely on militarism. Everything else they called illusion, idealism, and utopianism.
| 280 | Notes and Recollections | p. 5 | Historicism | |
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History speaks only to those people who know how to interpret it.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 859; p. 863 | History | |
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Historical knowledge is indispensable for those who want to build a better world.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | p. 14 | History | |
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History in the broadest sense of the term is the totality of human experience.
| 280 | The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science | p. 45 | History | |
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History should teach us to recognize causes and to understand driving forces; and when we understand everything, we will forgive everything.
| 280 | Nation, State, and Economy | p. 2 | History | |
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It is a fact that hardly any historian has fully avoided passing judgments of value.
| 280 | Theory and History | p. 21 | History | |
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The way in which the history of the last two hundred years has been treated is really a scandal.
| 280 | Planning for Freedom | p. 170 | History | |
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There is no such thing as a nonhistorical analysis of the present state of affairs.
| 280 | Theory and History | p. 287 | History | |
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The mere fact that an event happened in a distant country and a remote age does not in itself prove that it has no bearing on the present.
| 280 | Theory and History | p. 290 | History | |
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Again and again, the early historians of capitalism haveone can hardly use a milder wordfalsified history.
| 280 | Economic Policy | p. 7 | History | |
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History can tell us what happened in the past. But it cannot assert that it must happen again in the future.
| 280 | Human Action | p. 546; p. 549 | History | |
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A historians achievement consists in presenting the past in a new perspective of understanding.
| 280 | Theory and History | p. 290 | History | |
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History looks backward into the past, but the lesson it teaches concerns things to come. It does not teach indolent quietism; it rouses man to emulate the deeds of earlier generations.
| 280 | Theory and History | p. 294 | History | |
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Neither as judges allotting praise and blame nor as avengers seeking out the guilty should we face the past. We seek truth, not guilt; we want to know how things came about to understand them, not to issue condemnations.
| 280 | Nation, State, and Economy | p. 1 | History | |
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It is not the task of history to gratify the need of the masses for heroes and scapegoats.
| 280 | Nation, State, and Economy | p. 1 | History | |
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It is not the task of history to project the hatred and disagreements of the present back into the past and to draw from battles fought long ago weapons for the disputes of ones own time.
| 280 | Nation, State, and Economy | p. 2 | History | |
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History makes one wise, but not competent to solve concrete problems.
| 280 | Epistemological Problems of Economics | p. xxiii | History | |
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Every action adds something to history, affects the course of future events, and is in this sense a historical fact. The most trivial performance of daily routine by dull people is no less a historical datum than is the most startling innovation of the genius.
| 280 | Theory and History | p. 195 | History | |
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As human nature is, everybody is prone to overrate his own worth and deserts.
| 280 | The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality | p. 13 | Human Frailty | |
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If one rejects laissez faire on account of mans fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reasons also reject every kind of government action.
| 280 | Planning for Freedom | p. 44 | Human Frailty | |
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Only ideas can overcome ideas.
| 280 | Socialism | p. 460 | Ideas | |
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We must fight all that we dislike in public life. We must substitute better ideas for wrong ideas.
| 280 | Economic Policy | p. 105 | Ideas | |
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Both force and money are impotent against ideas.
| 280 | Omnipotent Government | p. 210 | Ideas | |
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The ideas that change the intellectual climate of a given environment are those unheard of before. For these new ideas there is no other explanation than that there was a man from whose mind they originated.
| 280 | The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science | p. 91 | Ideas | |
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One cannot organize or institutionalize the emergence of new ideas.
| 280 | The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science | p. 129 | Ideas | |
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In a battle between force and an idea, the latter always prevails.
| 280 | Liberalism | p. 50 | Ideas | |
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Great conflicts of ideas must be solved by straight and frank methods; they cannot be solved by artifices and makeshifts.
| 280 | Planning for Freedom | p. 14 | Ideas | |
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Thoughts and ideas are not phantoms. They are real things. Although intangible and immaterial, they are factors in bringing about changes in the realm of tangible and material things.
| 280 | Theory and History | p. 96 | Ideas | |
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No mass phenomenon can be adequately treated without analyzing the ideas implied. And no new ideas spring from the mythical mind of the masses.
| 280 | Theory and History | p. 263 | Ideas | |
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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 tyrants feet. Then the oppressed many will rise in rebellion and overthrow their masters.
| 280 | Theory and History | p. 372 | Ideas | |
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Ideas live longer than walls and other material artifacts.
| 280 | Theory and History | p. 196 | Ideas | |
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No one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interests of everyone hang on the result.
| 280 | Socialism | pp. 468-69 | Ideas | |
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No one can escape the influence of a prevailing ideology.
| 280 | Epistemological Problems of Economics | p. 197 | Ideology | |