[ Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (1943; 2007)] I was greatly interested in seeing that our system of free popular instruction was producing results, both negative and positive, which were quite different from those which its original designers expected it to produce. As Herbert Spencer has shown, no man or body of men has ever been wise enough to
[ Jefferson (1926; 2007)] Throughout the period of his ambassadorship, Mr. Jefferson found little doing in the way of business. Vergennes was polite, considerate, straightforward. They discussed one article of commerce after another, but could never come to much more than nominal terms. In the matter of rice, flour, fish, and “provisions of all
[The Page-Barbour Lectures for 1931 at the University of Virginia .] Traditionally, an educational system was conceived of as an organic whole, with distinct lines fixed between its units; and each unit was supposed to exercise its function with strict reference to the units preceding and succeeding it. When we organized our system, this was also
[ The Theory of Education in the United States: The Page-Barbour Lectures for 1931 at the University of Virginia ] We have seen that our school system is precisely such as one would expect; and we now see that our educational institutions are precisely such as one would expect. They cannot help themselves; their organizers and administrators
[ Our Enemy, the State (1935)] It was said at the time, I believe, that the actual causes of the colonial revolution of 1776 would never be known. The causes assigned by our schoolbooks may be dismissed as trivial; the various partisan and propagandist views of that struggle and its origins may be put down as incompetent. Great evidential value
[ On Doing the Right Thing , chapter 3, “The Decline of Conversation.”] Speaking as Bishop Pontoppidan did about the owls in Iceland, the most significant thing that I have noticed about conversation in America is that there is so little of it, and as time goes on there seems less and less of it in my hearing. I miss even so much of the free play
[This article is excerpted from chapter 8 of The Theory of Education in the United States (1931).] We may now take a rapid glance at the actual state of things which all these influences have combined to bring about. The procedure in the secondary school is perhaps sufficiently open to common observation so that we need say nothing about it
[ Snoring as a Fine Art, and Twelve Other Essays (1958)] My first and only presidential vote was cast many, many years ago. It was dictated by pure instinct. I remember the circumstances well. Like all well-brought-up youngsters, I had been told that it was the duty of every citizen to vote — reasons not stated. I was prepared to obey in all good
[Adapted from chapter 5 of Our Enemy, the State .] The revolution of 1776–1781 converted thirteen provinces, practically as they stood, into thirteen autonomous political units, completely independent, and they so continued until 1789, formally held together as a sort of league, by the Articles of Confederation. For our purposes, the point to be
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.
