Philosophy and Methodology

The environment determines the situation but not the response. To the same situation different modes of reacting are thinkable and feasible.

If the entrepreneur aims at the highest possible profit, he performs a service to society in managing an enterprise. Whoever hinders him from doing this acts against the interests of society and imperils the satisfaction of consumer needs.

Like today’s central bankers, John Law proposed to “supply the nation” with a sufficiency of money.

A man who is obliged to justify his handling of a matter in the eyes of other people often resorts to a pretext.

A man who is obliged to justify his handling of a matter in the eyes of other people often resorts to a pretext. As the motive of his deviation from the most suitable way of procedure he ascribes another reason than that which actually prompted him.

It is a hopeless task to interpret a symphony, a painting, or a novel.

There is a fundamental fact about the world that has profound implications for the supply of natural resources and for the relationship between production and economic activity on the one side and man's environment on the other: the entire earth consists of solidly packed chemical elements.

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. He cannot tell us with certainty what the creator's meaning was or what other people may see in it.

Herbert Spencer is often misrepresented in textbooks and websites as a "social Darwinist," but these claims describe a mythical Spencer that never existed. The real Spencer was quite different. The real Spencer often expressed views quite similar to modern-day libertarians.

The collectivist doctrines look upon the individual merely as a refractory rebel.