| Ludwig von Mises | 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. | Epistemological Problems of Economics | p. 228 | Economic Progress |
| Ludwig von Mises | It is not true that human conditions must always improve, and that a relapse into very unsatisfactory modes of life, penury and barbarism is impossible. | Planning for Freedom | p. 177 | Progress |
| Ludwig von Mises | There is no evidence that social evolution must move steadily upwards in a straight line. Social standstill and social retrogression are historical facts which we cannot ignore. World history is the graveyard of dead civilizations. | Socialism | p. 275 | Progress |
| Ludwig von Mises | What is called economic progress is the joint effect of the activities of the three progressive groups . . . the savers, the scientist-inventors, and the entrepreneurs, operating in a market economy. | The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science | p. 127 | Progress |
| Ludwig von Mises | Whoever preaches the return to simple forms of the economic organization of society ought to keep in mind that only our type of economic system offers the possibility of supporting in the style to which we have become accustomed today the number of people who now populate the earth. A return to the Middle Ages means the extermination of many hundreds of millions of people. | Liberalism | p. 189 | Progress |
| Ludwig von Mises | It is true that all this straining and struggling to increase their standard of living does not make men any happier. Nevertheless, it is in the nature of man continually to strive for an improvement in his material condition. If he is forbidden the satisfaction of this aspiration, he becomes dull and brutish. The masses will not listen to exhortations to be moderate and contented; it may be that the philosophers who preach such admonitions are laboring under a serious self-delusion. If one tells people that their fathers had it much worse, they answer that they do not know why they should not have it still better. | Liberalism | p. 190 | Progress |
| Ludwig von Mises | Men always strive for an improvement in their conditions and always will. This is mans inescapable destiny. | Liberalism | p. 190 | Progress |
| Ludwig von Mises | The progressives who today masquerade as liberals may rant against fascism; yet it is their policy that paves the way for Hitlerism. | Interventionism | p. 88 | Progressives |