The Quotable Mises

ACTION

Human action is purposeful behavior.

Human Action, p. 11; p. 11

Human life is an unceasing sequence of single actions.

Human Action, p. 45; p. 45

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.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 34

Man thinks not only for the sake of thinking, but also in order to act.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 37

Economics, as a branch of the more general theory of human action, deals with all human action, i.e., with man’s purposive aiming at the attainment of ends chosen, whatever these ends may be.

Human Action, p. 880; p. 884

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.

Human Action, p. 70; p. 70

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.

Human Action, p. 97; p. 97

Most actions do not aim at anybody’s defeat or loss. They aim at an improvement in conditions.

Human Action, p. 116; p. 116

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.

Human Action, p. 13; p. 13

Man’s 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.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 90

In the land of the lotus-eaters there is no action. Action arises only from need, from dissatisfaction. It is purposeful striving towards something. Its ultimate end is always to get rid of a condition which is conceived to be deficient—to fulfill a need, to achieve satisfaction, to increase happiness.

Socialism, p. 97

All rational action is in the first place individual action. Only the individual thinks. Only the individual reasons. Only the individual acts.

Socialism, p. 97

ADVERTISING

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.

Human Action, p. 317; p. 321

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.

Human Action, p. 318; p. 321

AMERICA

It is an enormous simplification to speak of the American mind. Every American has his own mind. It is absurd to ascribe any achievements and virtues or any misdeeds and vices of individual Americans to America as such. . . . What makes the American people different from any other people is the joint effect produced by the thoughts and actions of innumerable uncommon Americans.

Theory and History, pp. 191–92

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.

Economic Freedom and Interventionism, p. 7

The most serious dangers for American freedom and the American way of life do not come from without.

Economic Freedom and Interventionism, p. 101

There is no use in deceiving ourselves. American public opinion rejects the market economy, the capitalistic free enterprise system that provided the nation with the highest standard of living ever attained. Full government control of all activities of the individual is virtually the goal of both national parties.

Economic Freedom and Interventionism, p. 157

ANIMALS

The nonhuman animals never proceed beyond instinctive urges and conditioned reflexes.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 49

ANTI-SEMITISM

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.

Omnipotent Government, p. 190

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.

Omnipotent Government, p. 192

ANTITRUST LAWS

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.

Planned Chaos, p. 22

Those politicians, professors and union bosses who curse big business are fighting for a lower standard of living.

Theory and History, p. 147

ARCHITECTURE

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; they reflect old styles or hybridize divers old styles. 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. Although it would be mere pedantry not to appreciate the peculiar grandeur of such sights as the New York skyline, it can be admitted that modern architecture has not attained the distinction of that of past centuries.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 78

ARTS

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.

Theory and History, p. 63

It is a purposeful distortion of facts to blame the age of liberalism for an alleged materialism. The nineteenth century was not only a century of unprecedented improvement in technical methods of production and in the material well-being of the masses. It did much more than extend the average length of human life. Its scientific and artistic accomplishments are imperishable. It was an age of immortal musicians, writers, poets, painters, and sculptors; it revolutionized philosophy, economics, mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology. And, for the first time in history, it made the great works and the great thoughts accessible to the common man.

Human Action, p. 155; p. 155

Under capitalism, material success depends on the appreciation of a man’s 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.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 31

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.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 79

What characterizes capitalism is not the bad taste of the crowds, but the fact that these crowds, made prosperous by capitalism, became “consumers” of literature—of 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.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 79

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.

Theory and History, p. 63

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.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 45

The most primitive work of art also can express the strongest experience, and it speaks to us, if only we let it.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 46

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.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 136

There can be no freedom in art and literature where the government determines who shall create them.

Omnipotent Government, p. 52

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. Even if the creator himself provides a commentary on his work, as in the case of program-music, this uncertainty remains. There are no words to describe the ineffable.

Theory and History, p. 276

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.

Economic Policy, p. 31

AUSTRIAN ECONOMISTS

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. They looked with indifference upon the fact that the universities of the German-speaking countries, even many of the Austrian universities, were hostile to economics as such and still more so to the new economic doctrines of subjectivism.

Austrian Economics: An Anthology, p. 72

Those whom the world called the “Austrian economists” were, in the Austrian universities, somewhat reluctantly tolerated outsiders.

Austrian Economics: An Anthology, p. 56

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.

Notes and Recollections, p. 36.

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL

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.

Notes and Recollections, p. 70

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. He attempted to incite the nationalistic students and professors at the University of Vienna to turn against me. The assault miscarried.

Notes and Recollections, pp. 18–19

From time to time I entertained the hope that my writings would bear practical fruit and show the way for policy. I have always looked for evidence of a change in ideology. But I never actually deceived myself; 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.

Notes and Recollections, p. 115

BANKING

There was no reason whatever to abandon the principle of free enterprise in the field of banking.

Human Action, p. 440; p. 443

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.

Human Action, p. 444; p. 447

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.

Human Action, p. 440; p. 443

Imprudent granting of credit is bound to prove just as ruinous to a bank as to any other merchant.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 295

BARBARISM

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.

Liberty and Property, p. 26

BEHAVIORISM

Behaviorism fails to explain why different people adjust themselves to the same conditions in different ways.

Theory and History, p. 245

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.

Theory and History, pp. 245–46

BIG BUSINESS

The bigness and the economic “power” of the railroad companies did not impede the emergence of the motor car and the airplane.

Human Action, p. 276; p. 275

Big business always serves—directly or indirectly—the masses.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 2

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.

Planned Chaos, p. 15

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.

Theory and History, p. 118

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.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 42

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.

Planning for Freedom, p. 134

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.

Economic Policy, p. 4

BÖHM-BAWERK, EUGEN VON

There is no doubt that Böhm-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. A man not perfectly familiar with all the ideas advanced in these three volumes has no claim whatever to the appellation of an economist.

Economic Freedom and Interventionism, p. 133

A book of the size and profundity of Capital and Interest is not easy reading. But the effort expended pays very well. It will stimulate the reader to look upon political problems, not from the point of view of the superficial slogans resorted to in electoral campaigns, but with full awareness of their meaning and their consequences for the survival of our civilization.

Economic Freedom and Interventionism, p. 135

BORDERS

[In a liberal world] it makes no difference where the frontiers of a country are drawn. Nobody has a special material interest in enlarging the territory of the state in which he lives; nobody suffers loss if part of this area is separated from the state. It is also immaterial whether all parts of the state’s territory are in direct geographical connection, or whether they are separated by a piece of land belonging to another state. It is of no economic importance whether the country has a frontage on the ocean or not. In such a world the people of every village or district could decide by plebiscite to which state they want to belong.

Omnipotent Government, p. 92

BOURGEOISIE

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? Bourgeois civilization has created and spread a well-being, compared with which all the court life of the past seems meagre.

Socialism, p. 398

Through all the changes in the prevailing system of social stratification, moral philosophers continued to hold fast to the fundamental idea of Cicero’s doctrine that making money is degrading.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 194

BUREAUCRACY

The worst law is better than bureaucratic tyranny.

Bureaucracy, p. 76

In all countries with a settled bureaucracy people used to say: The cabinets come and go, but the bureaus remain.

Bureaucracy, p. 55

Bureaucratic management is management of affairs which cannot be checked by economic calculation.

Bureaucracy, p. 48

Nobody can be at the same time a correct bureaucrat and an innovator.

Bureaucracy, p. 67

The ultimate basis of an all around bureaucratic system is violence.

Bureaucracy, p. 104

Seen from the point of view of the particular group interests of the bureaucrats, every measure that makes the government’s payroll swell is progress.

Planning for Freedom, p. 48

If you have to convince a group of people who are not directly dependent on a solution of a problem, you will never succeed.

Economic Policy, pp. 30–31

A government enterprise can never be “commercialized” no matter how many external features of private enterprise are superimposed on it.

A Critique of Interventionism, p. 159

They are no longer eager to deal with each case to the best of their abilities; they are no longer anxious to find the most appropriate solution for every problem. Their main concern is to comply with the rules and regulations, no matter whether they are reasonable or contrary to what was intended. The first virtue of an administrator is to abide by the codes and decrees.

Bureaucracy, p. 41

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.

Human Action, p. 307; p. 310

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.

Bureaucracy, p. 66

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 man’s effort in terms of money.

Bureaucracy, p. 53

Of course, the bulk of the bureaucrats were rather mediocre men.

Bureaucracy, p. 56

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.

Bureaucracy, p. 67

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.

Omnipotent Government, p. x

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.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 186

The trend toward bureaucratic rigidity is not inherent in the evolution of business. It is an outcome of government meddling with business.

Bureaucracy, p. 12

No private enterprise will ever fall prey to bureaucratic methods of management if it is operated with the sole aim of making profit.

Bureaucracy, p. 64

BUSINESS CYCLES

If one wants to avoid the recurrence of economic crises, one must avoid the expansion of credit that creates the boom and inevitably leads into the slump.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 482

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.

On the Manipulation of Money and Credit, p. 139

Credit expansion can bring about a temporary boom. But such a fictitious prosperity must end in a general depression of trade, a slump.

Planned Chaos, p. 21

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.

Human Action, p. 562; p. 565

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.

Omnipotent Government, p. 251

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.

Human Action, p. 570; p. 572

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. The individual is always ready to ascribe his good luck to his own efficiency and to take it as a well-deserved reward for his talent, application and probity. But reverses of fortune he always charges to other people, and most of all to the absurdity of social and political institutions. He does not blame the authorities for having fostered the boom. He reviles them for the inevitable collapse.

Human Action, p. 574; p. 576

BUSINESSMEN

Of course, as a rule capitalists and entrepreneurs are not saints excelling in the virtue of self-denial. But neither are their critics saintly.

Planning for Freedom, p. 146

CALCULATION

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.” Goethe could say this because he was free from the resentment that the petty literati always foster against the businessman.

Liberalism, p. 97

Economic calculation makes it possible for business to adjust production to the demands of the consumers.

Bureaucracy, p. 27

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.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 234

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.

Bureaucracy, p. 32

CAPITAL

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.

Planning for Freedom, p. 111

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.

Planning for Freedom, p. 92

There are no means by which the general standard of living can be raised other than by accelerating the increase of capital as compared with population.

Planning for Freedom, pp. 5–6

In a given economic situation, the opportunities for production, which may actually be carried out, are limited by the supply of capital goods available.

On the Manipulation of Money and Credit, p. 125

It is nonsensical to impute the whole product to the purveyors of labor and to pass over in silence the contribution of the purveyors of capital and of entrepreneurial ideas. What brings forth usable goods is not physical effort as such, but physical effort aptly directed by the human mind toward a definite goal.

Human Action, No Entry; p. 301

All capital goods sooner or later enter into final products and cease to exist through use, consumption, wear and tear.

Human Action, p. 514; p. 517

Profit-seeking business is compelled to employ the most efficient methods of production. What checks a businessman’s endeavors to improve the equipment of his firm is only lack of capital.

Human Action, p. 769; p. 775

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.

Human Action, p. 844; p. 848

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.

Human Action, p. 844; p. 848

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.

Human Action, p. 847; p. 851

Capital does not reproduce itself.

Socialism, p. 177

CAPITALISM

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.

Human Action, p. 562; p. 565

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.

Liberty and Property, p. 9

Capitalism or market economy is that system of social cooperation and division of labor that is based on private ownership of the means of production.

Bureaucracy, p. 20

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 élite.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 49

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.

Human Action, p. 617; p. 622

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.

Omnipotent Government, pp. ix–x

The development of capitalism consists in everyone having the right to serve the consumer better and/or more cheaply.

Economic Policy, p. 5

There is no western, capitalistic country in which the conditions of the masses have not improved in an unprecedented way.

Economic Policy, p. 13

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.

Planned Chaos, p. 15

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.

On the Manipulation of Money and Credit, p. 176

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.

On the Manipulation of Money and Credit, p. 178

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. The average man lives in more satisfactory conditions than his ancestors or his fellows in noncapitalistic countries. And one must not dismiss as merely materialistic a civilization which makes it possible for practically everybody to enjoy a Beethoven symphony performed by an orchestra conducted by an eminent master.

Theory and History, p. 334

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 people’s mandatories. If they do not obey, if they fail to produce, at the lowest possible cost, what the consumers are asking for, they lose their office. Their task is service to the consumer. Profit and loss are the instruments by means of which the consumers keep a tight rein on all business activities.

Bureaucracy, pp. 21–22

A short time ago the demagogues blamed capitalism for the poverty of the masses. Today they rather blame capitalism for the “affluence” that it bestows upon the common man.

Human Action, No Entry; p. 859

Capitalism gave the world what it needed, a higher standard of living for a steadily increasing number of people.

Human Action, pp. 860–61; p. 864

The word “Capitalism” expresses, for our age, the sum of all evil. Even the opponents of Socialism are dominated by socialist ideas.

Socialism, p. 15

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.

Socialism, p. 286

We do not assert that the capitalist mode of economic calculation guarantees the absolutely best solution of the allocation of factors of production. Such absolutely perfect solutions of any problem are out of reach of mortal men. What the operation of a market not sabotaged by the interference of compulsion and coercion can bring about is merely the best solution accessible to the human mind under the given state of technological knowledge and the intellectual abilities of the age’s shrewdest men.

Human Action, p. 701; p. 705

The market economy needs no apologists and propagandists. It can apply to itself the words of Sir Christopher Wren’s epitaph in St. Paul’s: Si monumentum requiris, circumspice. [If you seek his monument, look around.]

Human Action, p. 850; p. 854

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.

Economic Policy, p. 7

The market economy—capitalism—is a social system of consumers’ supremacy.

Money, Method, and the Market Process, p. 233

Capitalism needs neither propaganda nor apostles. Its achievements speak for themselves. Capitalism delivers the goods.

Money, Method, and the Market Process, p. 242

CAPITALISM VS. SOCIALISM

The issue is always the same: the government or the market. There is no third solution.

Planned Chaos, p. 28

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.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, pp. 64–65

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 individual’s life and the unrestricted supremacy of the government in its capacity as central board of production management. There is no compromise possible between these two systems. Contrary to a popular fallacy there is no middle way, no third system possible as a pattern of a permanent social order. The citizens must choose between capitalism and socialism.

Bureaucracy, p. 10

If one rejects laissez faire on account of man’s fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action.

Planning for Freedom, p. 44

Tyranny is the political corollary of socialism, as representative government is the political corollary of the market economy.

Planning for Freedom, p. 218

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.

Human Action, p. 676; p. 680

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.

Socialism, p. 335

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.

Socialism, p. 405

[Classical] 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.

Socialism, p. 460

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.

Omnipotent Government, p. 53

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.

Liberalism, p. 79

CAUSE AND EFFECT

Cognizance of the relation between a cause and its effect is the first step toward man’s orientation in the world and is the intellectual condition of any successful activity.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 20

CENSORSHIP

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. But it is quite another thing when some people threaten other people with serious reprisals in case they should not stop patronizing certain publications and their publishers.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 56

CHANGE

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.

Socialism, p. 188

In life everything is continually in flux.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 108

There is never a standstill in the economy, but perpetual changes, movement, innovation, the continual emergence of the unprecedented.

Liberalism, p. 80

CHARITY

We may fully endorse the religious and ethical precepts that declare it to be man’s 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.

Human Action, p. 835; p. 839

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. Not metaphysical prepossessions, but considerations of practical expediency make it inadvisable to promulgate an actionable right to sustenance. It is, moreover, an illusion to believe that the enactment of such laws could free the indigent from the degrading features inherent in receiving alms. The more openhanded these laws are, the more punctilious must their application become. The discretion of bureaucrats is substituted for the discretion of people whom an inner voice drives to acts of charity.

Human Action, pp. 835–36; pp. 839–40

CHAUVINISM

Every sort of chauvinism is mistaken.

Liberalism, p. 144

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.

Liberalism, pp. 150–51

Conceit and overvaluation of one’s 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.

Omnipotent Government, p. 124

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.

Omnipotent Government, p. 125

CHOICE

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.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 57

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.

Human Action, p. 19; pp. 19–20

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.

Theory and History, p. 15

CHRISTIANITY

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.

Socialism, p. 378

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.

Theory and History, p. 68

Christian Socialism is none the less Socialism.

Socialism, p. 382

Christianity has acquiesced in slavery and polygamy, has practically canonized war, has, in the name of the Lord, burnt heretics and devastated countries.

Socialism, pp. 397–98

Virtually all the Christian churches and sects have espoused the principles of socialism and interventionism. In almost every country the clergy favor nationalism. In spite of the fact that Catholicism is world embracing, even the Roman Church offers no exception. The nationalism of the Irish, the Poles, and the Slovaks is to a great extent an achievement of the clergy. French nationalism found most effective support in the Church.

Omnipotent Government, p. 120

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.

Omnipotent Government, p. 30

CHURCHILL, WINSTON

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.

Economic Policy, p. 49

CIVIL SERVICE

It kills ambition, destroys initiative and the incentive to do more than the minimum required. It makes the bureaucrat look at instructions, not at material and real success.

Bureaucracy, p. 56

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.

Bureaucracy, p. 79

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.

Bureaucracy, p. 81

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.

Socialism, p. 160

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.

Socialism, p. 457

CIVILIZATION

What distinguishes civilized man from a barbarian must be acquired by every individual anew.

Theory and History, p. 293

What distinguishes man from animals is the insight into the advantages that can be derived from cooperation under the division of labor. Man curbs his innate instinct of aggression in order to cooperate with other human beings. The more he wants to improve his material well-being, the more he must expand the system of the division of labor.

Human Action, p. 827; p. 831

Modern civilization is a product of the philosophy of laissez faire. It cannot be preserved under the ideology of government omnipotence.

Human Action, p. 828; p. 832

Civilization is a product of leisure and the peace of mind that only the division of labour can make possible.

Socialism, p. 271

For society is nothing but collaboration.

Socialism, p. 281

Civilization is a work of peaceful co-operation.

Socialism, p. 291

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. The savage thus turns toward civilization and citizenship.

Omnipotent Government, p. 241

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.

Liberalism, p. 63

Modern civilization will not perish unless it does so by its own act of self-destruction. No external enemy can destroy it the way the Spaniards once destroyed the civilization of the Aztecs, for no one on earth can match his strength against the standard-bearers of modern civilization. Only inner enemies can threaten it. It can come to an end only if the ideas of liberalism are supplanted by an antiliberal ideology hostile to social cooperation.

Liberalism, pp. 188–89

CLASSES

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.

Omnipotent Government, p. 118

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. In every country of the world dynasties and aristocrats have worked with the socialists and interventionists against freedom.

Omnipotent Government, p. 119

The elite should be supreme by virtue of persuasion, not by the assistance of firing squads.

Omnipotent Government, p. 120

CLASS MOBILITY

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 monarch’s good graces. In the capitalistic society, men become rich—directly as the producer of consumers’ goods, or indirectly as the producer of raw materials and semi-produced factors of production—by serving consumers in large numbers. This means that men who became rich in the capitalistic society are serving the people.

On the Manipulation of Money and Credit, pp. 177–78

In the unhampered market economy there are no privileges, no protection of vested interests, no barriers preventing anybody from striving after any prize.

Theory and History, p. 114

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.

Planning for Freedom, p. 117

Under capitalism everybody is the architect of his own fortune.

Bureaucracy, p. 100

CLASSICAL LIBERALISM

Economic knowledge necessarily leads to liberalism.

A Critique of Interventionism, p. 86

Several generations of economic policy which was nearly liberal have enormously increased the wealth of the world.

Socialism, p. 13

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.

Socialism, p. 37

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.

Socialism, p. 46

That Liberalism aims at the protection of property and that it rejects war are two expressions of one and the same principle.

Socialism, p. 59

The only task of the strictly Liberal state is to secure life and property against attacks both from external and internal foes.

Socialism, p. 133

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.

Omnipotent Government, p. 51

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.

Omnipotent Government, p. 91

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. Frontiers are drawn on the maps but they do not hinder the migrations of men and shipping of commodities. Natives do not enjoy rights that are denied to aliens. . . . The courts are independent and effectively protect everybody against the encroachments of officialdom. Everyone is permitted to say, to write, and to print what he likes. Education is not subject to government interference. . . . The men in office are regarded as mortal men, not as superhuman beings or as paternal authorities who have the right and duty to hold the people in tutelage. Governments do not have the power to dictate to the citizens.

Omnipotent Government, pp. 91–92

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. Only one who does not want to achieve such ends as life, health, and prosperity for himself, his friends, and those he loves, only one who prefers sickness, misery, and suffering may reject the reasoning of liberalism.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 39

COERCION

All attempts to coerce the living will of human beings into the service of something they do not want must fail.

Socialism, p. 263

Economic affairs cannot be kept going by magistrates and policemen.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 282

COLLECTIVISM

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.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 153

The main characteristic of collectivism is that it does not take notice of the individual’s will and moral self-determination.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 106

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.

Theory and History, p. 61

Society does not exist apart from the thoughts and actions of people. It does not have “interests” and does not aim at anything. The same is valid for all other collectives.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 79

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.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 42

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.

Theory and History, p. 254

COLONIALISM

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.

Liberalism, p. 125

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.

Liberalism, p. 126

The marvelous achievements of the British administration in India were overshadowed by the vain arrogance and stupid race pride of the white man. Asia is in open revolt against the gentlemen for whom socially there was but little difference between a dog and a native. . . . But it is at the same time the manifest failure of the greatest experiment in benevolent absolutism ever put to work.

Omnipotent Government, p. 98

The initiative for the great colonial projects came not from finance and business but from the governments.

Omnipotent Government, p. 99

COMMUNISM

In regard to economic policy, socialism and communism are identical.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 178 n

A sound monetary policy is one of the foremost means to thwart the insidious schemes of communism.

Economic Freedom and Interventionism, p. 106

COMPETITION

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.

A Critique of Interventionism, p. 48

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.

Human Action, p. 117; p. 117

The sharper the competition, the better it serves its social function to improve economic production.

A Critique of Interventionism, p. 84

It is merely a metaphor to call competition competitive war, or simply, war. The function of battle is destruction; of competition, construction.

Socialism, p. 285

CONFLICT

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.

Socialism, p. 306

There are no irreconcilable conflicts between selfishness and altruism, between economics and ethics, between the concerns of the individual and those of society.

Theory and History, pp. 54–55

CONSCRIPTION

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.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 165

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.

Interventionism, pp. 69–70

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.

Interventionism, pp. 69–70

CONSERVATISM

Great Britain would not have gone socialist if the Conservatives, not to speak of the “Liberals,” had not virtually endorsed socialist ideas.

Theory and History, p. 319n

The essence of an individual’s freedom is the opportunity to deviate from traditional ways of thinking and of doing things.

Theory and History, p. 378

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.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 119

Every reactionary lacks intellectual independence.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 119

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.

Liberalism, p. 86

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.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 122

CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT

There is really no essential difference between the unlimited power of the democratic state and the unlimited power of the autocrat. The idea that carries away our demagogues and their supporters, the idea that the state can do whatever it wishes, and that nothing should resist the will of the sovereign people, has done more evil perhaps than the caesar-mania of degenerate princelings.

Socialism, pp. 64–65

CONSUMER

The real bosses, in the capitalist system of market economy, are the consumers. They, by their buying and by their abstention from buying, decide who should own the capital and run the plants. They determine what should be produced and in what quantity and quality. Their attitudes result either in profit or in loss for the enterpriser. They make poor men rich and rich men poor. They are no easy bosses.

Bureaucracy, pp. 20–21

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.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 2

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.

Bureaucracy, p. 37

CONSUMER SOVEREIGNTY

Go into the home of the average American family and you will see for whom the wheels of the machines are turning.

Liberty and Property, p. 22

What vitiates entirely the socialists’ economic critique of capitalism is their failure to grasp the sovereignty of the consumers in the market economy.

Liberty and Property, p. 13

CORRUPTION

The evil that a man inflicts on his fellow man injures both—not 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.

Liberalism, p. 58

There is no such thing as a just and fair method of exercising the tremendous power that interventionism puts into the hands of the legislature and the executive.

Human Action, No Entry; p. 734

In many fields of the administration of interventionist measures, favoritism simply cannot be avoided.

Human Action, No Entry; p. 735

Corruption is a regular effect of interventionism.

Human Action, No Entry; p. 736

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.

A Critique of Interventionism, p. 30

Corruption is an evil inherent in every government not controlled by a watchful public opinion.

Omnipotent Government, p. 206

CREATIVITY

The essence of an individual’s freedom is the opportunity to deviate from traditional ways of thinking and of doing things.

Theory and History, p. 378

Only the human mind that directs action and production is creative.

Human Action, p.141; p. 141

CREDIT

Credit transactions are in fact nothing but the exchange of present goods against future goods.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 47

Credit expansion is not a nostrum to make people happy. The boom it engenders must inevitably lead to a debacle and unhappiness.

Planning for Freedom, p. 189

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.

Planning for Freedom, p. 63

The essence of a credit-expansion boom is not overinvestment, but investment in wrong lines, i.e., malinvestment.

Human Action, p. 556; p. 559

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.

Human Action, p. 559; p. 561

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.

Human Action, p. 559; p. 562

The final outcome of the credit expansion is general impoverishment.

Human Action, p. 562; p. 564

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.

Human Action, p. 788; p. 794

CREDITORS

Every grant of credit is a speculative entrepreneurial venture, the success or failure of which is uncertain.

Human Action, p. 536; p. 539

Over all species of deferred payments hangs, like the sword of Damocles, the danger of government interference. Public opinion has always been biased against creditors.

Human Action, p. 537; p. 540

Lenders of money have been held in odium, at all times and among all peoples.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 264

CULTURE

After all, culture is wealth. Without well-being, without wealth, there never has been culture.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 74

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.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 215

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.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 110

A higher standard of living also brings about a higher standard of culture and civilization.

Economic Policy, p. 89

DEATH

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.

Human Action, p. 877; p. 881

True, man cannot escape death. But for the present he is alive; and life, not death, takes hold of him. Whatever the future may have in store for him, he cannot withdraw from the necessities of the actual hour. As long as a man lives, he cannot help obeying the cardinal impulse, the elan vital. It is man’s 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.

Human Action, pp. 877–78; pp. 881–82

DEFICITS

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.

Planning for Freedom, p. 89

It is always an inflationist policy, not “economic conditions,” which bring about the monetary depreciation. The evil is philosophical in character.

On the Manipulation of Money and Credit, p. 48

If one regards inflation as an evil, then one has to stop inflating. One has to balance the budget of the government.

Economic Policy, pp. 72–73

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.

On the Manipulation of Money and Credit, p. 5

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?

On the Manipulation of Money and Credit, p. 38

In public administration there is no connection between revenue and expenditure.

Bureaucracy, p. 47

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. We do not want to annoy our friends by cutting down expenditure. We want the voters to feel happy under the artificial short-lived prosperity which the easy money policy and rich supply of additional money generate. Later, when our adversaries will be in office, the inevitable consequence of our expansionist policy, viz., depression, will appear. Then we shall blame them for the disaster and assail them for their failure to balance the budget properly.

Planning for Freedom, p. 87

The two pillars of democratic government are the primacy of the law and the budget.

Bureaucracy, p. 41

If it is unnecessary to adjust the amount of expenditure to the means available, there is no limit to the spending of the great god State.

Planning for Freedom, p. 90

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.

Human Action, p. 655; p. 659

DEMOCRACY

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.

Bureaucracy, p. 121

Democracy too is not divine.

Omnipotent Government, p. 47

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. That a policy is deemed expedient by the majority does not prove its expediency. The individuals who form the majority are not gods, and their joint conclusions are not necessarily godlike.

Omnipotent Government, p. 47

People can today seek salvation only in democracy, in the right of self-determination both of individuals and of nations.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 131

DEVELOPMENT

What is lacking to the underdeveloped nations is not knowledge, but capital.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 127

The prerequisite for more economic equality in the world is industrialization. And this is possible only through increased capital investment, increased capital accumulation.

Economic Policy, p. 86

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.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 83

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. The economic backwardness of such countries as India consists precisely in the fact that their policies hinder both the accumulation of domestic capital and the investment of foreign capital. As the capital required is lacking, the Indian enterprises are prevented from employing sufficient quantities of modern equipment, are therefore producing much less per man-hour and can only afford to pay wage rates which, compared with American wage rates, appear as shockingly low.

Planning for Freedom, p. 152

It is not true that the economic backwardness of foreign countries is to be imputed to technological ignorance on the part of their peoples.

Planning for Freedom, p. 196

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.

Planning for Freedom, p. 197

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.

Economic Policy, p. 89

DICTATORSHIP

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.

Bureaucracy, p. 43

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.

Bureaucracy, p. 91

Nobody every 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.

Omnipotent Government, p. 242

DISCLOSURE

Governments and local administrative bodies decide to inform the public of their mistakes only when losses have become disproportionately great.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 226

DISCRIMINATION

Like the mystical sense of communion, racial hatred is not a natural phenomenon innate in man. It is a product of ideologies.

Human Action, p. 168; p. 168

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 or his department and thereby impairs his own income and his position in the economic system.

Human Action, p. 629; p. 634

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, and if he does not restrain himself in time he will be driven, by the loss of his property, into a position where he can inflict no further damage. Special means of controlling his behavior are unnecessary. The market controls him more strictly and exactingly than could any government or other organ of society.

Socialism, p. 401

DIVISION OF LABOR

Within the framework of social cooperation every citizen depends on the services rendered by all his fellow citizens.

Bureaucracy, p. 77

Under the division of labor, the structure of society rests on the shoulders of all men and women.

Bureaucracy, pp. 77–78

Every expansion of the personal division of labor brings advantages to all who take part in it.

Socialism, p. 261

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.

Socialism, p. 261

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.

Socialism, p. 279

Now the greatest accomplishment of reason is the discovery of the advantages of social cooperation, and its corollary, the division of labor.

Omnipotent Government, p. 121

Economic history is the development of the division of labor.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 134

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.

Liberalism, p. 18

DRUGS

The alcoholic and the drug addict harm only themselves by their behavior; the person who violates the rules of morality governing man’s life in society harms not only himself, but everyone.

Liberalism, p. 35

As soon as we surrender the principle that the state should not interfere in any questions touching on the individual’s mode of life, we end by regulating and restricting the latter down to the smallest details.

Liberalism, p. 54

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.

Liberalism, p. 54

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; and a utilitarian must therefore consider them as vices. But this is far from demonstrating that the authorities must interpose to suppress these vices by commercial prohibitions, nor is it by any means evident that such intervention on the part of a government is really capable of suppressing them or that, even if this end could be attained, it might not therewith open up a Pandora’s box of other dangers, no less mischievous than alcoholism and morphinism. . . . For if the majority of citizens is, in principle, conceded the right to impose its way of life upon a minority, it is impossible to stop at prohibitions against indulgences, in alcohol, morphine, and cocaine, and similar poisons. Why should not what is valid for these poisons be valid also for nicotine, caffeine, and the like? Why should not the state generally prescribe which foods may be indulged in and which must be avoided because they are injurious? . . . More harmful still than all these pleasures, many will say, is the reading of evil literature.

Liberalism, p. 53

ECONOMETRICS

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.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 63

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.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. xiv

As there are in the field of social affairs no constant relations between magnitudes, no measurement is possible and economics can never become quantitative.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 460

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.” Nonetheless he wants to introduce some numbers, arbitrarily chosen on the basis of a historical fact, as “unknown behavior constants.”

Theory and History, p. 10

ECONOMIC CALCULATION

What economic calculation requires is a monetary system whose functioning is not sabotaged by government interference.

Human Action, p. 225; pp. 223–24

The endeavors to expand the quantity of money in circulation either in order to increase the government’s 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.

Human Action, p. 225; p. 224

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. Were we to dispense with it, any economic system of calculation would become absolutely impossible.

Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth, p. 25

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.

Socialism, p. 123

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.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 157

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.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 160

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

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.

Money, Method, and the Market Process, p. 173

ECONOMIC PROGRESS

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

ECONOMICS

Economics is not about goods and services; it is about human choice and action.

Human Action, p. 491; p. 494

Economics deals with real man, weak and subject to error as he is, not with ideal beings, omniscient and perfect as only gods could be.

Human Action, p. 97; p. 97

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 man’s human existence.

Human Action, p. 874; p. 878

The economist must never be a specialist. In dealing with any problem he must always fix his glance upon the whole system.

Austrian Economics: An Anthology, p. 157

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.

Austrian Economics: An Anthology, p. 155

Economics as such is a challenge to the conceit of those in power. An economist can never be a favorite of autocrats and demagogues. With them he is always the mischief-maker, and the more they are inwardly convinced that his objections are well founded, the more they hate him.

Austrian Economics: An Anthology, p. 155

There is economics and there is economic history. The two must never be confused.

Austrian Economics: An Anthology p. 155

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.

Austrian Economics: An Anthology, p. 58

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.

Economic Freedom and Interventionism, pp. 51–52

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.

Austrian Economics: An Anthology, p. 75

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.

Economic Freedom and Interventionism, p. 235

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.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 23

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.

Planning for Freedom, p. 147

But for a few dozen individuals all over the globe are cognizant of economics, and no statesman or politician cares about it.

A Critique of Interventionism, p. 106

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.

Human Action, p. 756; p. 762

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.

Human Action, p. 865; p. 869

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.

Human Action, p. 875; p. 878

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 society’s fundamental problems; it concerns everyone and belongs to all. It is the main and proper study of every citizen.

Human Action, p. 875; p. 879

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.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 3

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.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 77

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. It makes no difference whether action springs from altruistic or from egoistic motives, from a noble or from a base disposition; whether it is directed toward the attainment of materialistic or idealistic ends; whether it arises from exhaustive and painstaking deliberation or follows fleeting impulses and passions.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 34

Only by letting fall morsels of statistics is it possible for the economic theorist to maintain his prestige.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 216

People may disagree on the question of whether everybody ought to study economics seriously. But one thing is certain. A man who publicly talks or writes about the opposition between capitalism and socialism without having fully familiarized himself with all that economics has to say about these issues is an irresponsible babbler.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 47

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. The fate of mankind—progress on the road that western civilization has taken for thousands of years, or a rapid plunge into a chaos from which there is no way out, from which no new life as we know it will ever develop—depends on whether this condition persists.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 202

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.

Human Action, p. 885

ECONOMISTS

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.

Economic Freedom and Interventionism, p. 154

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.

Economic Freedom and Interventionism, p. 234

There are only economists and laymen. There are no such things as labor economists or farm economists.

Economic Freedom and Interventionism, p. 234

EDUCATION

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.

Liberalism, p. 115

European totalitarianism is an upshot of bureaucracy’s preeminence in the field of education. The universities paved the way for the dictators.

Bureaucracy, p. 87

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.

Planning for Freedom, p. 162

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.

Human Action, p. 868; p. 872

The majority of the students espouse without any inhibitions the interventionist panaceas recommended by their professors.

Human Action, p. 871; p. 875

What has made many of the present-day universities by and large nurseries of socialism is not so much the conditions prevailing in the departments of economics as the teachings handed down in other departments.

Human Action, p. 871; p. 875

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.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 78

Continued adherence to a policy of compulsory education is utterly incompatible with efforts to establish lasting peace.

Liberalism, p. 114

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 determined to change the linguistic allegiance of their subjects. The philanthropists and pedagogues of England who advocated public education did not foresee what waves of hatred and resentment would rise out of this institution.

Omnipotent Government, pp. 82–83

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.

Economic Freedom and Interventionism, p. 171

Innovators and creative geniuses cannot be reared in schools. They are precisely the men who defy what the school has taught them.

Human Action, p. 311, p. 314

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.

Bureaucracy, p. 71

ELECTIONS

The horrors of revolution and civil war can be avoided if a disliked government can be smoothly dislodged at the next election.

The Historical Setting of the Austrian School, p. 35

ENTREPRENEUR

The planning businessman cannot help employing data concerning the unknown future; he deals with future prices and future costs of production.

Human Action, p. 225; p. 224

The entrepreneurs . . . are not infallible and often blunder. But they are less liable to error, and blunder less than other people do.

Planning for Freedom, p. 114

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.

Theory and History, p. 109

The only source from which an entrepreneur’s profits stem is his ability to anticipate better than other people the future demand of the consumers.

Human Action, p. 288; p. 290

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.

Planning for Freedom, p. 117

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.

Human Action, p. 582; p. 585

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.

Human Action, p. 859; p. 863

In order to succeed in business a man does not need a degree from a school of business administration. These schools train the subalterns for routine jobs. They certainly do not train entrepreneurs. An entrepreneur cannot be trained. A man becomes an entrepreneur by seizing an opportunity and filling the gap. No special education is required for such a display of keen judgment, foresight, and energy.

Human Action, p. 311, p. 314

ENVIRONMENT

Animals are forced to adjust themselves to the natural conditions of their environment; if they do not succeed in this process of adjustment, they are wiped out. Man is the only animal that is able—within definite limits—to adjust his environment purposively to suit him better.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 8

It is vain to provide for the needs of ages the technological abilities of which we cannot even dream.

Human Action, p. 383; p. 386

Talk about the magnificence of untouched nature is idle if it does not take into account what man has got by “desecrating” nature. The earth’s marvels were certainly splendid when visitors seldom set foot upon them. Commercially organized tourist traffic made them accessible to the many. The man who thinks “What a pity not to be alone on this peak! Intruders spoil my pleasure,” fails to remember that he himself probably would not be on the spot if business had not provided all the facilities required. The technique of the historicists’ indictment of capitalism is simple indeed. They take all its achievements for granted, but blame it for the disappearance of some enjoyments that are incompatible with it and for some imperfections which still may disfigure its products. They forget that mankind has had to pay a price for its achievements—a price paid willingly because people believe that the gain derived, e.g., the prolongation of the average length of life, is more to be desired.

Theory and History, pp. 218–19

ENVY

The masses do not like those who surpass them in any regard. The average man envies and hates those who are different.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 123

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.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 123

Nobody seems to doubt that to prevent some people from acquiring riches is a policy extremely beneficial for the rest of society. Everybody is sincerely convinced that technological progress is an act of God not conditioned by the methods of social organization. Enjoying all the new products which free enterprise provides, they are tormented by one thought only: that some people have become rich in creating these new things.

Economic Freedom and Interventionism, pp. 231–32

EQUALITY

Nothing, however, is as ill founded as the assertion of the alleged equality of all members of the human race.

Liberalism, p. 28

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.

Human Action, p. 159; p. 160

The heir of a wealthy man [undoubtedly] enjoys a certain advantage as he starts under more favorable conditions than others.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, pp. 40–41

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.

Theory and History, p. 331

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.

Socialism, p. 288

Men are unequal; individuals differ from one another. They differ because their prenatal as well as their postnatal history is never identical.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 59

Equality of opportunity is a factor neither in prize fights and beauty contests nor in any other field of competition, whether biological or social. The immense majority of people are by the physiological structure of their bodies deprived of a chance to attain the honors of a boxing champion or a beauty queen. Only very few people can compete on the labor market as opera singers and movie stars.

Human Action, p. 276; p. 276

In talking about equality and asking vehemently for its realization, nobody advocates a curtailment of his own present income.

Planning for Freedom, p. 137

What those people who ask for equality have in mind is always an increase in their own power to consume.

Human Action, p. 836; p. 840

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.

Theory and History, p. 354

EQUILIBRIUM

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.

Theory and History, p. 367

EUROPE

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.

Liberalism, p. 147

If one wants to study the reasons for Europe’s 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.

Planning for Freedom, p. 136

One cannot counteract the policy of economic isolation on a national scale by replacing it with the same policy on the part of a larger political entity comprising a number of different nationalities. 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.

Liberalism, pp. 146–47

EXCHANGE

All human action, so far as it is rational, appears as the exchange of one condition for another. Men apply economic goods and personal time and labour in the direction which, under the given circumstances, promises the highest degree of satisfaction, and they forgo the satisfaction of lesser needs so as to satisfy the more urgent needs. This is the essence of economic activity—the carrying out of acts of exchange.

Socialism, p. 97

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.

Human Action, pp. 328–29; p. 331

There are in the market economy no conflicts between the interests of the buyers and sellers.

Human Action, p. 661; p. 665

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. He loses on account of his lack of foresight; the sale limits his loss even if the price received is low. 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.

Human Action, pp. 661–62; pp. 665–66

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.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 76

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.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 90

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.

On the Manipulation of Money and Credit, p. 21

EXPECTATIONS

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. Understanding, by trying to grasp what is going on in the minds of the men concerned, can approach the problem of forecasting future conditions. We may call its methods unsatisfactory and the positivists may arrogantly scorn it. But such arbitrary judgments must not and cannot obscure the fact that understanding is the only appropriate method of dealing with the uncertainty of future conditions.

Human Action, p. 118; p. 118

EXPERIENCE

Experience is a mental act on the part of thinking and acting men.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 15

Experience tells us something we did not know before and could not learn but for having had the experience.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 18

No thinking and no acting would be possible to man if the universe were chaotic, i.e., if there were no regularity whatever in the succession and concatenation of events. In such a world of unlimited contingency. . . . There would be no possibility for man to expect anything. All experience would be merely historical, the record of what has happened in the past. No inference from past events to what might happen in the future would be permissible.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, pp. 19–20

New experience can force us to discard or modify inferences we have drawn from previous experience.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 27

FAIRNESS

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.

Human Action, p. 329; p. 332

There is no such thing as a just and fair method of exercising the tremendous power that interventionism puts into the hands of the legislature and the executive. The advocates of interventionism pretend to substitute for the—as they assert, “socially” detrimental—effects of private property and vested interests the unlimited discretion of the perfectly wise and disinterested legislator and his conscientious and indefatigable servants, the bureaucrats.

Human Action, No Entry; pp. 734–35

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 is—in a market not sabotaged by government-imposed restrictions—exclusively your fault if you do not outstrip the chocolate king, the movie star and the boxing champion.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, pp. 9–10.

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.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 15

FARM PROGRAMS

It is not in the power of the government to make everybody more prosperous. It can raise the income of the farmers by forcibly restricting domestic agricultural production. But the higher prices of farm products are paid by the consumers, not by the state. The counterpart of the farmers’ higher standard of living is the lowering of the standard of living of the rest of the nation.

Bureaucracy, p. 84

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 and makes other farms, the operation of which was hitherto profitable, submarginal.

Human Action, p. 656; p. 660

It is true that there is such a thing as the corn-hog cycle and analogous happenings in the production of other farm products. But the recurrence of such cycles is due to the fact that the penalties which the market applies against inefficient and clumsy entrepreneurs do not affect a great part of the farmers. These farmers are not answerable for their actions because they are the pet children of governments and politicians. If it were not so, they would long since have gone bankrupt and their former farms would be operated by more intelligent people.

Human Action, p. 583; p. 586

FATE

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.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 61

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.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, pp. 65–66

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.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 198

Fatalism is so contrary to human nature that few people were prepared to draw all the conclusions to which it leads and to adjust their conduct accordingly. It is a fable that the victories of the Arabian conquerors in the first centuries of Islam were due to the fatalist teachings of Mohammed. The leaders of the Moslem armies which within an unbelievably short time conquered a great part of the Mediterranean area did not put a fatalistic confidence in Allah. Rather they believed that their God was for the big, well-equipped, and skillfully led battalions. . . . Nor was the lethargy which spread later among the Islamitic peoples caused by the fatalism of their religion. It was despotism that paralyzed the initiative of the subjects. The harsh tyrants who oppressed the masses were certainly not lethargic and apathetic. They were indefatigable in their quest for power, riches, and pleasures.

Theory and History, pp. 79–80

FEDERALISM

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.

Omnipotent Government, p. 268

FEMINISM

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 circumstances—so far it is nothing more than a branch of the great liberal movement, which advocates peaceful and free evolution. When, going beyond this, it attacks the institutions of social life under the impression that it will thus be able to remove the natural barriers, it is a spiritual child of Socialism. For it is a characteristic of Socialism to discover in social institutions the origin of unalterable facts of nature, and to endeavor, by reforming these institutions, to reform nature.

Socialism, p. 87

Woman’s struggle to preserve her personality in marriage is part of that struggle for personal integrity which characterizes the rationalist society of the economic order based on private ownership of the means of production. 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.

Socialism, pp. 90–91

FIAT MONEY

For the naive mind there is something miraculous in the issuance of fiat money. A magic word spoken by the government creates out of nothing a thing which can be exchanged against any merchandise a man would like to get. How pale is the art of sorcerers, witches, and conjurors when compared with that of the government’s Treasury Department!

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 458

FISHER, IRVING

Thus we are in a position to see that Fisher’s proposal actually offers no more than was offered by any previous plan for a multiple standard. In regard to the role of money as a standard of deferred payments, the verdict must be that, for long-term contracts, Fisher’s scheme is inadequate. For short-term commitments, it is both inadequate and superfluous.

On the Manipulation of Money and Credit, p. 95

FOREIGN AID

The worst method to fight communism is that of the Marshall Plan. . . . The United States, they think, is aiding them because its people have a bad conscience. They themselves pocket this bribe but their sympathies go to the socialist system. The American subsidies make it possible for their governments to conceal partially the disastrous effects of the various socialist measures they have adopted.

Planning for Freedom, pp. 141–42

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.

Money, Method, and the Market Process, p. 172

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.

Money, Method, and the Market Process, p. 173

FOREIGN CAPITAL

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.

Economic Policy, p. 89

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.

Omnipotent Government, p. 102

With the end of a great period in the nineteenth century when foreign capital helped to develop, in all parts of the world, modern methods of transportation, manufacturing, mining, and agriculture, there came a new era in which the governments and the political parties considered the foreign investor as an exploiter who should be expelled from the country.

Economic Policy, p. 82

There has been much talk about the alleged exploitation of the debtor nations by the creditor nations. But if the concept of exploitation is to be applied to these relations, it is rather an exploitation of the investing by the receiving nations. These loans and investments were not intended as gifts. The loans were made upon solemn stipulation of payment of principal and interest. The investments were made in the expectation that property rights would be respected.

Omnipotent Government, p. 102

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.

The Theory of Money and Credit, pp. 28–29

FOREIGN EXCHANGE

Foreign-exchange control is today primarily a device for the virtual expropriation of foreign investments. It has destroyed the international capital and money market. It is the main instrument of policies aiming at the elimination of imports and thereby at the economic isolation of the various countries. It is thus one of the most important factors in the decline of Western civilization.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 476

FREE MARKET

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.

Human Action, p. 280; p. 283

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. They merely protect the freedom that the competitive economic system grants to the individuals against encroachments on the part of the police power.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, pp. 99–100

The market is a democracy in which every penny gives a right to vote. It is true that the various individuals have not the same power to vote. The richer man casts more ballots than the poorer fellow. But to be rich and to earn a higher income is, in the market economy, already the outcome of the previous election. The only means to acquire wealth and to preserve it, in a market economy not adulterated by government-made privileges and restrictions, is to serve the consumers in the best and cheapest way. Capitalists and landowners who fail in this regard suffer losses. If they do not change their procedure, they lose their wealth and become poor. It is the consumers who make poor people rich and rich people poor.

Planned Chaos, pp. 25–26

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. Those who disagree with the dictator’s plan have no other means to carry on than to defeat the despot by force of arms.

Planned Chaos, p. 30

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 everybody’s actions aim at the satisfaction of other people’s needs as well as at the satisfaction of his own. Everybody in acting serves his fellow citizens. Everybody, on the other hand, is served by his fellow citizens. Everybody is both a means and an end in himself, an ultimate end for himself and a means to other people in their endeavors to attain their own ends.

Human Action, p. 258; p. 257

Liberty and freedom are the conditions of man within a contractual society.

Human Action, p. 280; p. 282

The market steers the capitalistic economy. It directs each individual’s 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.

Planning for Freedom, p. 72

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.

Human Action, p. 384; p. 387

Every step a government takes beyond the fulfillment of its essential function of protecting the smooth operation of the market economy against aggression, whether on the part of domestic or foreign disturbers, is a step forward on the road that directly leads into the totalitarian system where there is no freedom at all.

Human Action, No Entry; p. 282

The market economy [capitalism] was not devised by a master mind; it was not first planned as an utopian scheme and then put to work. Spontaneous actions of individuals, aiming at nothing else than at the improvement of their own state of satisfaction, undermined the prestige of the coercive status system step by step.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 109

FREE TRADE

Free trade begins at home.

Omnipotent Government, p. 237

In our age of international division of labor, free trade is the prerequisite for any amicable arrangement between nations.

Omnipotent Government, p. 6

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.

Socialism, p. 268

The nationalists stress the point that there is an irreconcilable conflict between the interests of various nations, but that, on the other hand, the rightly understood interests of all the citizens within the nation are harmonious. A nation can prosper only at the expense of other nations; the individual citizen can fare well only if his nation flourishes. The liberals have a different opinion. They believe that the interests of various nations harmonize no less than those of the various groups, classes, and strata of individuals within a nation. They believe that peaceful international cooperation is a more appropriate means than conflict for the attainment of the end which they and the nationalists are both aiming at: their own nation’s welfare. They do not, as the nationalists charge, advocate peace and free trade in order to betray their own nation’s interests to those of foreigners. On the contrary, they consider peace and free trade the best means to make their own nation wealthy. What separates the free traders from the nationalists are not ends, but the means recommended for attainment of the ends common to both.

Human Action, p. 183; p. 183

If trade were completely free, production would only take place under the most suitable conditions.

Socialism, p. 201

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.

Money, Method, and the Market Process, pp. 135–36

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.

Money, Method, and the Market Process, p. 136

FREEDOM

The distinction between an economic sphere of human life and activity and a noneconomic sphere is the worst of their fallacies. If an omnipotent authority has the power to assign to every individual the tasks he has to perform, nothing that can be called freedom and autonomy is left to him. He has only the choice between strict obedience and death by starvation.

Theory and History, pp. 376–77

Freedom must be granted to all, even to base people, lest the few who can use it for the benefit of mankind be hindered.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 108

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.

Human Action, p. 284; p. 287

Freedom is indivisible. As soon as one starts to restrict it, one enters upon a decline on which it is difficult to stop.

Human Action, p. 319; p. 322

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.

Planning for Freedom, p. 38

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.

Theory and History, p. 61

Freedom in society means that a man depends as much upon other people as other people depend on him.

Economic Policy, p. 19

Freedom really means the freedom to make mistakes.

Economic Policy, p. 22

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. They dream of a perfect system of government that—as they think—would have already long since been realized if these “bad” men, guided by stupidity and selfishness, had not hindered its establishment.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 95

This, then, is freedom in the external life of man—that 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.

Socialism, p. 171

When men have gained freedom in purely economic relationships they begin to desire it elsewhere.

Socialism, p. 171

The only true national autonomy is the freedom of the individual against the state and society.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 96

As soon as we surrender the principle that the state should not interfere in any questions touching on the individual’s mode of life, we end by regulating and restricting the latter down to the smallest detail.

Liberalism, p. 54

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.

Economic Policy, p. 17

Liberty and freedom are the conditions of man within a contractual society.

Human Action, p. 282

Freedom, as people enjoyed it in the democratic countries of Western civilization in the years of the old liberalism’s triumph, was not a product of constitutions, bills of rights, laws, and statutes. Those documents aimed only at safeguarding liberty and freedom, firmly established by the operation of the market economy, against encroachments on the part of office holders. No government and no civil law can guarantee and bring about freedom otherwise than by supporting and defending the fundamental institutions of the market economy. . . . Where there is no market economy, the best-intentioned provisions of constitutions and laws remain a dead letter.

Human Action, p. 283; p. 285

The freedom of man under capitalism is an effect of competition.

Human Action, p. 283; p. 285

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS

A free press can exist only where there is private control on the means of production.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 55

FREEDOM OF THOUGHT

It was in the climate created by this capitalistic system of individualism that all the modern intellectual achievements thrived. Never before had mankind lived under conditions like those of the second part of the nineteenth century, when, in the civilized countries, the most momentous problems of philosophy, religion, and science could be freely discussed without any fear of reprisals on the part of the powers that be. It was an age of productive and salutary dissent.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 123

FUTURE

Nothing suggests the belief that progress toward more satisfactory conditions is inevitable or a relapse into very unsatisfactory conditions impossible.

Human Action, pp. 856–57; p. 861

No sect and no political party has believed that it could afford to forgo advancing its cause by appealing to men’s senses. 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.

Liberalism, p. 193

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.

Economic Freedom and Interventionism, p. 244

GANDHI

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. It does not seem to occur to him that Western capital alone made it possible for the Hindus to enjoy these facilities.

Omnipotent Government, p. 102

GENIUS

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.

Austrian Economics: An Anthology, p. 58

A true genius is very rarely acknowledged as such by his contemporaries.

Bureaucracy, p. 13

Everything that is thought, done and accomplished is a performance of individuals. New ideas and innovations are always an achievement of uncommon men.

Human Action, pp. 859–60; p. 863

Genius does not allow itself to be hindered by any consideration for the comfort of its fellows—even of those closest to it.

Socialism, p. 85

It may well be that he who gives new values to mankind, or who is capable of so giving, suffers want and poverty. But there is no way to prevent this effectively. The creative spirit innovates necessarily. It must press forward. It must destroy the old and set the new in its place. It could not conceivably be relieved of this burden. If it were it would cease to be a pioneer. Progress cannot be organized. It is not difficult to ensure that the genius who has completed his work shall be crowned with laurel; that his mortal remains shall be laid in a grave of honor and monuments erected to his memory. But it is impossible to smooth the way that he must tread if he is to fulfill his destiny. Society can do nothing to aid progress. If it does not load the individual with quite unbreakable chains, if it does not surround the prison in which it encloses him with quite unsurmountable walls, it has done all that can be expected of it. Genius will soon find a way to win its own freedom.

Socialism, p. 167

To see and to act in advance, to follow new ways, is always the concern only of the few, the leaders.

Socialism, p. 188

The history of science is the record of the achievements of individuals who worked in isolation and, very often, met with indifference or even open hostility on the part of their contemporaries.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 129

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.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 213

What counts is not the data, but the mind that deals with them. The data that Galileo, Newton, Ricardo, Menger, and Freud made use of for their great discoveries lay at the disposal of every one of their contemporaries and of untold previous generations. Galileo was certainly not the first to observe the swinging motion of the chandelier in the cathedral at Pisa.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 71

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. To be sure, without the foundations which mastery of the scientific technique and literature provides, nothing can be accomplished. However, the decisive factor remains the personality of the thinker.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, pp. 71–72

The first thing a genius needs is to breathe free air.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 108

Genius does not allow itself to be hindered by any consideration for the comfort of its fellows—even of those closest to it.

Socialism, pp. 85–85

GOD

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.

Socialism, p. 56

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.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 3

GOLD STANDARD

Every nation, whether rich or poor, powerful or feeble, can at any hour once again adopt the gold standard.

Omnipotent Government, p. 252

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.

Economic Policy, p. 65

The superiority of the gold standard consists in the fact that the value of gold develops independent of political actions.

On the Manipulation of Money and Credit, p. 90

The gold standard alone makes the determination of money’s purchasing power independent of the ambitions and machinations of governments, of dictators, of political parties, and of pressure groups. The gold standard alone is what the nineteenth-century freedom-loving leaders (who championed representative government, civil liberties, and prosperity for all) called “sound money.”

Planning for Freedom, p. 185

Governments deliberately sabotaged it, and still go on sabotaging it.

Planning for Freedom, p. 185

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. What counts is that these coins really contain a fixed weight of gold and that every quantity of bullion can be transformed into coins. Under the gold standard the dollar and the pound sterling were merely names for a definite weight of gold, within very narrow margins precisely determined by the laws.

Human Action, p. 425; pp. 428–29

Men have chosen the precious metals gold and silver for the money service on account of their mineralogical, physical, and chemical features. 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.

Human Action, p. 468; p. 471

The gold standard was the world standard of the age of capitalism, increasing welfare, liberty, and democracy, both political and economic. In the eyes of the free traders its main eminence was precisely the fact that it was an international standard as required by international trade and the transactions of the international money and capital market. It was the medium of exchange by means of which Western industrialism and Western capital had borne Western civilization into the remotest parts of the earth’s surface, everywhere destroying the fetters of age-old prejudices and superstitions, sowing the seeds of new life and new well-being, freeing minds and souls, and creating riches unheard of before. It accompanied the triumphal unprecedented progress of Western liberalism ready to unite all nations into a community of free nations peacefully cooperating with one another.

Human Action, pp. 469–70; pp. 472–73

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. In their eyes the gold standard was the labarum, the symbol, of all those doctrines and policies they wanted to destroy.

Human Action, p. 470; p. 473

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.

Economic Freedom and Interventionism, p. 86

The excellence of the gold standard is to be seen in the fact that it renders the determination of the monetary unit’s purchasing power independent of the policies of governments and political parties.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 456

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. Solemn pledges were broken, retroactive laws were promulgated, provisions of constitutions and bills of rights were openly defied. And hosts of servile writers praised what the governments had done and hailed the dawn of the fiat-money millennium.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 461

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.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 495

If we had gold coins in actual daily circulation everywhere in the world . . . the depreciation of gold would . . . not have taken place at all.

Money, Method, and the Market Process, p. 84

GOOD GOVERNMENT

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.

Planning for Freedom, p. 6

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.

Economic Policy, p. 37

I do not hate the government by declaring that it is fit to do certain things but not fit to do other things.

Economic Policy, p. 38

Governments become liberal only when forced to by the citizens.

Omnipotent Government, p. 58

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.

Omnipotent Government, p. 120

GOOD WILL

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.

Human Action, p. 377; p. 380

GOVERNMENT

Government is essentially the negation of liberty.

Liberty and Property, p. 19

It is the opposite of liberty. It is beating, imprisoning, hanging.

Liberty and Property, p. 19

Government means always coercion and compulsion and is by necessity the opposite of liberty.

Human Action, p. 283; p. 285

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.

Liberalism, p. 45

It is an illusion to expect that despotism will always side with the good causes.

Theory and History, p. 372

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.

Omnipotent Government, p. 58

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. The truth is the government cannot give if it does not take from somebody.

Bureaucracy, p. 84

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.

Planning for Freedom, p. 187

Whoever wants to see the world governed according to his own ideas must strive for dominion over men’s minds. It is impossible, in the long run, to subject men against their will to a regime that they reject. Whoever tries to do so by force will ultimately come to grief, and the struggles provoked by his attempt will do more harm than the worst government based on the consent of the governed could ever do. Men cannot be made happy against their will.

Liberalism, p. 46

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.

Liberalism, p. 68

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. From time immemorial, therefore, it has been the idea of all absolute monarchs, of all despots and tyrants, to ally themselves with the “people” against the propertied classes.

Liberalism, p. 69

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—itself deeply rooted in instinctive envy—has availed to abolish it.

Liberalism, p. 69

Daily experience proves clearly to everybody but the most bigoted fanatics of socialism that governmental management is inefficient and wasteful.

Economic Freedom and Interventionism, p. 62

There is no remedy for the inefficiency of public management.

Economic Freedom and Interventionism, p. 63

The main problem is how to prevent the police power from becoming tyrannical. This is the meaning of all the struggles for liberty.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 98

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.

Human Action, p. 283

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.

Human Action, pp. 728–29, p. 733

GROSS NATIONAL PRODUCT

The macroeconomic concept of national income is a mere political slogan devoid of any cognitive value.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 87

GROUPS

Every collectivist assumes a different source for the collective will, according to his own political, religious and national convictions.

Socialism, p. 56

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. In speaking of social groups it must be remembered that the members of one group are at the same time members of other groups. The conflict of groups is not a conflict between neatly integrated herds of men. It is a conflict between various concerns in the minds of individuals.

Theory and History, p. 257

GUNS

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 government’s political aims. The members of the linguistic minority are treated like foes or like outlaws. . . . Protection is denied to their property, persons, and lives when they are attacked by armed gangs of zealous members of the ruling linguistic group. They cannot even undertake to defend themselves: the licenses required for the possession of arms are denied to them.

Omnipotent Government, p. 83

HAPPINESS

Men cannot be made happy against their will.

Liberalism, p. 46

Nobody is in a position to decree what should make a fellow man happier.

Human Action, p. 14; p. 14

Each individual is the only and final arbiter in matters concerning his own satisfaction and happiness.

Theory and History, p. 13

Nobody is called upon to determine what could make another man happier or less unhappy.

Planning for Freedom, p. 118

You do not increase the happiness of a man eager to attend a performance of Abie’s 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.

Bureaucracy, pp. 90–91

There is no means of comparing and measuring the happiness of different people and of the same people at different times.

Human Action, p. 617; p. 621

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.

Socialism, p. 405

Man is not evil merely because he wants to enjoy pleasure and avoid pain—in other words, to live. Renunciation, abnegation, and self-sacrifice are not good in themselves.

Socialism, p. 409

HEALTH

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.

Socialism, p. 431

HISTORICAL SCHOOL

The political significance of the work of the Historical school consisted in the fact that it rendered Germany safe for the ideas, the acceptance of which made popular with the German people all those disastrous policies that resulted in the great catastrophes. The aggressive imperialism that twice ended in war and defeat, the limitless inflation of the early 1920s, the command economy and all the horrors of the Nazi regime were achievements of politicians who acted as they had been taught by the champions of the Historical school.

Austrian Economics: An Anthology, p. 67

HISTORICISM

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.

Notes and Recollections, p. 5

HISTORY

History speaks only to those people who know how to interpret it.

Human Action, p. 859; p. 863

Historical knowledge is indispensable for those who want to build a better world.

Omnipotent Government, p. 14

History in the broadest sense of the term is the totality of human experience.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 45

History should teach us to recognize causes and to understand driving forces; and when we understand everything, we will forgive everything.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 2

It is a fact that hardly any historian has fully avoided passing judgments of value. But such judgments are always merely incidental to the genuine tasks of history. In uttering them the author speaks as an individual judging from the point of view of his personal valuations, not as a historian.

Theory and History, p. 21

The way in which the history of the last two hundred years has been treated is really a scandal.

Planning for Freedom, p. 170

There is no such thing as a nonhistorical analysis of the present state of affairs.

Theory and History, p. 287

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.

Theory and History, p. 290

Again and again, the early historians of capitalism have—one can hardly use a milder word—falsified history.

Economic Policy, p. 7

History can tell us what happened in the past. But it cannot assert that it must happen again in the future.

Human Action, p. 546; p. 549

A historian’s achievement consists in presenting the past in a new perspective of understanding.

Theory and History, p. 290

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.

Theory and History, p. 294

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.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 1

It is not the task of history to gratify the need of the masses for heroes and scapegoats.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 1

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 one’s own time.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 2

History makes one wise, but not competent to solve concrete problems.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. xxiii

If history could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization.

Omnipotent Government, p. 58

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.

Theory and History, p. 195

HUMAN FRAILTY

As human nature is, everybody is prone to overrate his own worth and deserts.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 13

If one rejects laissez faire on account of man’s fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reasons also reject every kind of government action.

Planning for Freedom, p. 44

IDEAS

Only ideas can overcome ideas.

Socialism, p. 460

We must fight all that we dislike in public life. We must substitute better ideas for wrong ideas. We must refute the doctrines that promote union violence.

Economic Policy, p. 105

Everything that happens in the social world in our time is the result of ideas. Good things and bad things. What is needed is to fight bad ideas. We must oppose the confiscation of property, the control of prices, inflation, and all those evils from which we suffer.

Economic Policy, p. 105

Both force and money are impotent against ideas.

Omnipotent Government, p. 210

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.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 91

One cannot “organize” or “institutionalize” the emergence of new ideas.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 129

In a battle between force and an idea, the latter always prevails.

Liberalism, p. 50

Great conflicts of ideas must be solved by straight and frank methods; they cannot be solved by artifices and makeshifts.

Planning for Freedom, p. 14

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.

Theory and History, p. 96

No mass phenomenon can be adequately treated without analyzing the ideas implied. And no new ideas spring from the mythical mind of the masses.

Theory and History, p. 263

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 tyrant’s feet. Then the oppressed many will rise in rebellion and overthrow their masters.

Theory and History, p. 372

Ideas live longer than walls and other material artifacts.

Theory and History, p. 196

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. Whether he chooses or not, every man is drawn into the great historical struggle, the decisive battle into which our epoch has plunged us.

Socialism, pp. 468–69

IDEOLOGY

No one can escape the influence of a prevailing ideology.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 197

There is no use in dealing in a summary way with any ideology however foolish and contradictory it may appear. Even a manifestly erroneous doctrine should be refuted by careful analysis and the unmasking of the fallacies implied. A sound doctrine can win only by exploding the delusions of its adversaries.

The Theory of Money and Credit, pp. 455–56

IMMIGRATION

There cannot be the slightest doubt that migration barriers diminish the productivity of human labor.

Liberalism, p. 139

The closed-door policy is one of the root causes of our wars.

Omnipotent Government, p. 263

Immigrants soon find their place in urban life, they soon adopt, externally, town manners and opinions, but for a long time they remain foreign to civic thought. One cannot make a social philosophy one’s own as easily as a new costume. . . . More menacing than barbarians storming the walls from without are the seeming citizens within—those who are citizens in gesture, but not in thought.

Socialism, p. 38

IMPERIALISM

Neither fame nor honor nor wealth nor happiness was to be found on this path.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 75

The welfare of a people lies not in casting other peoples down but in peaceful collaboration.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 75

The imperialistic people’s state scarcely differs from the old principle state in its interpretation of sovereignty and its boundaries. Like the latter, it knows no other limits to the expansion of its rule than those drawn by the opposition of an equally strong power. Even its lust for conquest is unlimited. It wants to hear nothing of the right of peoples. If it “needs” a territory, then it simply takes it and, where possible, demands further from the subjugated peoples that they find this just and reasonable. Foreign peoples are in its eyes not subjects but objects of policy.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 79

Nothing is more stupid than efforts to justify today’s imperialism, with all of its brutalities, by reference to atrocities of generations long since gone.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 76

For fully developed imperialism, the individual no longer has value. He is valuable to it only as a member of the whole, as a soldier of an army.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 78

Marxian socialism, as a fundamentally revolutionary movement, is inwardly inclined toward imperialism. No one will dispute that, least of all the Marxists themselves, who straightforwardly proclaim the cult of revolution. It is less noted, however, that modern socialism of necessity must be imperialistic outwardly also.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 206

Modern imperialism is distinguished from the expansionist tendencies of the absolute principalities by the fact that its moving spirits are not the members of the ruling dynasty, nor even of the nobility, the Bureaucracy, or the officers’ corps of the army bent on personal enrichment and aggrandizement by plundering the resources of conquered territories, but the mass of the people, who look upon it as the most appropriate means for the preservation of national independence.

Liberalism, p. 122

INDEX CALCULATION

Even if the fundamental difficulties standing in the way of index calculations could be overcome, the practical difficulties remaining would still be very great.

Money, Method, and the Market Process, p. 88

INDIVIDUALISM

On the market it is not mankind, the state, or the corporative unit that acts, but individual men and groups of men, and that their valuations and their actions are decisive, not those of abstract collectives. . . . This discovery signaled nothing less than a Copernican revolution in social science.

Austrian Economics: An Anthology, p. 125

In the history of the last two hundred years we can discern . . . the trend toward freedom, the rights of man, and self-determination. This individualism resulted in the fall of autocratic government, the establishment of democracy, the evolution of capitalism, technical improvements, and an unprecedented rise in standards of living. It substituted enlightenment for old superstitions, scientific methods of research for inveterate prejudices. It was an epoch of great artistic and literary achievements, the age of immortal musicians, painters, writers, and philosophers. And it brushed away slavery, serfdom, torture, inquisition, and other remnants of the dark ages.

Omnipotent Government, p. 8

The philosophy that is the characteristic mark of the West and whose consistent elaboration has in the last centuries transformed all social institutions has been called individualism. It maintains that ideas, the good ones as well as the bad, originate in the mind of an individual man.

Theory and History, p. 37

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

The factory owners did not have the power to compel anybody to take a factory job. They could only hire people who were ready to work for the wages offered to them. Low as these wage rates were, they were nonetheless much more than these paupers could earn in any other field open to them. It is a distortion of facts to say that the factories carried off the housewives from the nurseries and the kitchens and the children from their play. These women had nothing to cook with and to feed their children. These children were destitute and starving. Their only refuge was the factory. It saved them, in the strict sense of the term, from death by starvation.

Human Action, p. 615; pp. 619–20

The outstanding fact about the Industrial Revolution is that it opened an age of mass production for the needs of the masses. The wage earners are no longer people toiling merely for other people’s well-being. They themselves are the main consumers of the products the factories turn out. Big business depends upon mass consumption.

Human Action, p. 616; p. 621

The market economy itself was not a product of violent action—of revolutions—but of a series of gradual peaceful changes. The implications of the term “industrial revolution” are utterly misleading.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 109

The mothers who worked in the factories had nothing to cook with; they did not leave their homes and their kitchens to go into the factories, they went into factories because they had no kitchens, and if they had a kitchen they had no food to cook in those kitchens. And the children did not come from comfortable nurseries. They were starving and dying.

Economic Policy, pp. 6–7

INFANT INDUSTRIES

The infant industries argument advanced in favor of protective tariffs represents a hopeless attempt to justify such measures on a purely economic basis, without regard to political considerations. It is a grievous error to fail to recognize the political motivation behind the demand for tariffs on behalf of infant industries.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 223

INFLATION

Continued inflation inevitably leads to catastrophe.

Defense, Controls, and Inflation, p. 109

The assistance of inflation is invoked whenever a government is unwilling to increase taxation or unable to raise a loan; that is the truth of the matter.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 253

What people today call inflation is not inflation, i.e., the increase in the quantity of money and money substitutes, but the general rise in commodity prices and wage rates which is the inevitable consequence of inflation. This semantic innovation is by no means harmless.

Planning for Freedom, p. 79

But the certain fact about inflation is that, sooner or later, it must come to an end. It is a policy that cannot last.

Economic Policy, p. 63

The most important thing to remember is that inflation is not an act of God, that inflation is not a catastrophe of the elements or a disease that comes like the plague. Inflation is a policy.

Economic Policy, p. 72

Money, like chocolate on a hot oven, was melting in the pockets of the people.

Economic Policy, p. 65

Inflation can be pursued only so long as the public still does not believe it will continue. Once the people generally realize that the inflation will be continued on and on and that the value of the monetary unit will decline more and more, then the fate of the money is sealed. Only the belief, that the inflation will come to a stop, maintains the value of the notes.

On the Manipulation of Money and Credit, p. 16

Inflationism, however, is not an isolated phenomenon. It is only one piece in the total framework of politico-economic and socio-philosophical ideas of our time. Just as the sound money policy of gold standard advocates went hand in hand with liberalism, free trade, capitalism and peace, so is inflationism part and parcel of imperialism, militarism, protectionism, statism and socialism.

On the Manipulation of Money and Credit, p. 48

Inflation and credit expansion, the preferred methods of present day government openhandedness, do not add anything to the amount of resources available. They make some people more prosperous, but only to the extent that they make others poorer.

Bureaucracy, p. 84

The pretended solicitude for the nation’s welfare, for the public in general, and for the poor ignorant masses in particular was a mere blind. The governments wanted inflation and credit expansion, they wanted booms and easy money.

Human Action, p. 438; p. 441

It would be a serious blunder to neglect the fact that inflation also generates forces which tend toward capital consumption. One of its consequences is that it falsifies economic calculation and accounting. It produces the phenomenon of illusory or apparent profits.

Human Action, p. 546; p. 549

If inflation is pushed to its ultimate consequences, it makes any stipulation of deferred payments in terms of the inflated currency cease altogether.

Human Action, p. 779; p. 785

Credit expansion and inflationary increase of the quantity of money frustrate the “common man’s” attempts to save and to accumulate reserves for less propitious days.

Human Action, p. 834; p. 838

Inflation is essentially antidemocratic.

Omnipotent Government, p. 252

The advocates of public control cannot do without inflation. They need it in order to finance their policy of reckless spending and of lavishly subsidizing and bribing the voters.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 479

One can say without exaggeration that inflation is an indispensable intellectual means of militarism. Without it, the repercussions of war on welfare would become obvious much more quickly and penetratingly; war-weariness would set in much earlier.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 163

No complaint is more widespread than that against “dearness of living.” There has been no generation that has not grumbled about the “expensive times” that it lives in. But the fact that “everything” is becoming dearer simply means that the objective exchange value of money is falling.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 177

Who has any doubt that the belligerent peoples of Europe would have tired of war much more quickly if their governments had clearly and candidly laid before them at the time the account of their war expenditure?

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 254

Inflation has always been an important resource of policies of war and revolution and why we also find it in the service of socialism.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 255

Inflation is the fiscal complement of statism and arbitrary government. It is a cog in the complex of policies and institutions which gradually lead toward totalitarianism.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 468

No emergency can justify a return to inflation. Inflation can provide neither the weapons a nation needs to defend its independence nor the capital goods required for any project. It does not cure unsatisfactory conditions. It merely helps the rulers whose policies brought about the catastrophe to exculpate themselves.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 481

Inflation is the true opium of the people and it is administered to them by anticapitalist governments and parties.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 485

INSTINCT

Every doctrine denying to the “single paltry individual” any role in history must finally ascribe changes and improvements to the operation of instincts. As those upholding such doctrines see it, man is an animal that has the instinct to produce poems, cathedrals, and airplanes. Civilization is the result of an unconscious and unpremeditated reaction of man to external stimuli. Each achievement is the automatic creation of an instinct with which man has been endowed especially for this purpose. There are as many instincts as there are human achievements. It is needless to enter into a critical examination of this fable invented by impotent people for slighting the achievements of better men and appealing to the resentment of the dull. Even on the basis of this makeshift doctrine one cannot negate the distinction between the man who had the instinct to write the book On the Origin of Species and those who lacked this instinct.

Theory and History, p. 194–95

INTELLECTUALS

They coined most of the slogans that guided the butcheries of Bolshevism, Fascism, and Nazism. Intellectuals extolling the delights of murder, writers advocating censorship, philosophers judging the merits of thinkers and authors, not according to the value of their contributions but according to their achievements on battlefields, are the spiritual leaders of our age of perpetual strife.

Austrian Economics: An Anthology, p. 75

Only the literati are enthusiastic about poverty, i.e., the poverty of others. The rest of mankind, however, prefer prosperity to misery.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 92

The intellectual leaders of the peoples have produced and propagated the fallacies which are on the point of destroying liberty and Western civilization.

Planned Chaos, p. 90

It is certain that many intellectuals envy the higher income of prosperous businessmen and that these feelings drive them toward socialism. They believe that the authorities of a socialist commonwealth would pay them higher salaries than those that they earn under capitalism.

Human Action, p. 90; p. 90

American authors or scientists are prone to consider the wealthy businessman as a barbarian, as a man exclusively intent upon making money.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 20

There are people to whom monetary calculation is repulsive. They do not want to be roused from their daydreams by the voice of critical reason. Reality sickens them, they long for a realm of unlimited opportunity. They are disgusted by the meanness of a social order in which everything is nicely reckoned in dollars and pennies.

Human Action, p. 231; p. 230

Many “progressive” professors have for some time served in one of the various alphabetical government agencies. . . . They compiled statistics and wrote memoranda which their superiors, either politicians or former managers of corporations, filed without reading. The professors did not instill a scientific spirit into the bureaus. But the bureaus gave them the mentality of authoritarianism. They distrust the populace and consider the State (with a capital S) as the God-sent guardian of the wretched underlings. Only the Government is impartial and unbiased. Whoever opposes any expansion of governmental powers is by this token unmasked as an enemy of the commonweal.

Planning for Freedom, p. 167

The first socialists were the intellectuals; they and not the masses are the backbone of Socialism.

Socialism, p. 461

Almost all the fathers of socialism were members of the upper middle class or of the professions.

Omnipotent Government, p. 118

From the political point of view it is no doubt dangerous that men are so easily stirred by bombastic talk. But the political actions of modern nationalism cannot be explained or excused by chauvinist intoxication. They are the outcome of cool though misguided reasoning. The carefully elaborated, although erroneous, doctrines of scholarly and thoughtful books have led to the clash of nations, to bloody wars, and destruction.

Omnipotent Government, p. 125

The educated classes are possessed by the idea that in the social domain anything can be accomplished if only one applies enough force and is sufficiently resolute.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 200

Every new theory encounters opposition and rejection at first. The adherents of the old, accepted doctrine object to the new theory, refuse it recognition, and declare it to be mistaken. Years, even decades, must pass before it succeeds in supplanting the old one. A new generation must grow up before its victory is decisive.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 184

INTEREST RATE

Interest is the difference in the valuation of present goods and future goods; it is the discount in the valuation of future goods as against that of present goods.

Planning for Freedom, pp. 187–88

The height of the market rate of interest ultimately does not depend on the whims, fancies, and the pecuniary interests of the personnel operating the government apparatus of coercion and compulsion, the much-referred-to “public sector” of the economy.

Planning for Freedom, p. 188

It cannot be denied that everyone is inclined—especially among the borrowers of this lowest category—to overestimate his own credit rating, and call the rates demanded by creditors too high.

A Critique of Interventionism, p. 49

Public opinion always wants “easy money,” that is, low interest rates.

A Critique of Interventionism, p. 163

There cannot be any question of abolishing interest by any institutions, laws, or devices of bank manipulation. He who wants to “abolish” interest will have to induce people to value an apple available in a hundred years no less than a present apple. What can be abolished by laws and decrees is merely the right of the capitalist to receive interest. But such decrees would bring about capital consumption and would very soon throw mankind back into the original state of natural poverty.

Human Action, p. 529; p. 532

The expectation of rising prices thus has the tendency to make the gross rate of interest rise, while the expectation of dropping prices makes it drop.

Human Action, p. 540; p. 543

The greater the fund of means of subsistence in a community, the lower the rate of interest.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 386

INTERNATIONAL LAW

All attempts to create a substantive international law through whose application disputes among nations could be decided have miscarried.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 90

[Y]ou simply cannot argue with nationalists. The Germans are fully convinced that compulsion applied by them to other nations is fair and just, while compulsion applied to themselves is criminal.

Omnipotent Government, pp. 257–58

No international authority can preserve peace if economic wars continue. In our age of international division of labor, free trade is the prerequisite for any amicable arrangement between nations. And free trade is impossible in a world of etatism.

Omnipotent Government, p. 6

INTERNATIONAL MONETARY COOPERATION

What governments call international monetary cooperation is concerted action for the sake of credit expansion.

Human Action, p. 473; p. 476

INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND

Even the manifest futility of the International Monetary Fund does not deter authors from indulging in dreams about a world bank fertilizing mankind with floods of cheap credit.

The Theory of Money and Credit, pp. 477–78

INTERNATIONAL TRADE

The world community of labor is based on the reciprocal advantage of all participants. Whoever wants to maintain and extend it must renounce all resentment in advance.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 220

Foreign trade differs from domestic trade only in so far as goods and services are exchanged beyond the borderlines separating the territories of two sovereign nations.

Human Action, p. 662; p. 666

It is a matter of indifference whether one produces foodstuffs and raw materials at home oneself or, if it seems more economic, obtains them from abroad in exchange for other products that one has produced.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 84

Imports are in fact paid for by exports and not by money.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 286

INTERVENTIONISM

The essence of the interventionist policy is to take from one group to give to another. It is confiscation and distribution.

Human Action, p. 851; p. 855

If all interventionist laws were really to be observed they would soon lead to absurdity.

A Critique of Interventionism, p. 30

Socialism and interventionism. Both have in common the goal of subordinating the individual unconditionally to the state.

Omnipotent Government, p. 44

Economic interventionism is a self-defeating policy. The individual measures that it applies do not achieve the results sought. They bring about a state of affairs, which—from the viewpoint of its advocates themselves—is much more undesirable than the previous state they intended to alter.

Bureaucracy, p. 119

Interventionism cannot be considered as an economic system destined to stay. It is a method for the transformation of capitalism into socialism by a series of successive steps.

Planning for Freedom, p. 28

The middle-of-the-road policy is not an economic system that can last. It is a method for the realization of socialism by installments.

Planning for Freedom, pp. 32–33

The effect of its interference is that people are prevented from using their knowledge and abilities, their labor and their material means of production in the way in which they would earn the highest returns and satisfy their needs as much as possible. Such interference makes people poorer and less satisfied.

Human Action, p. 736; p. 743

On the unhampered market there prevails an irresistible tendency to employ every factor of production for the best possible satisfaction of the most urgent needs of the consumers. If the government interferes with this process, it can only impair satisfaction; it can never improve it.

Human Action, pp. 736–37; pp. 743–44

But for the inefficiency of the law-givers and the laxity, carelessness, and corruption of many of the functionaries, the last vestiges of the market economy would have long since disappeared.

Human Action, No Entry; p. 859

If the State takes the power of disposal from the owner piecemeal, by extending its influence over production; if its power to determine what direction production shall take and what kind of production there shall be, is increased, then the owner is left at last with nothing except the empty name of ownership, and property has passed into the hands of the State.

Socialism, p. 45

Every step that leads away from private ownership of the means of production and the use of money is a step away from rational economic activity.

Socialism, p. 102

State interference in economic life, which calls itself “economic policy,” has done nothing but destroy economic life. Prohibitions and regulations have by their general obstructive tendency fostered the growth of the spirit of wastefulness.

Socialism, p. 424

It is indeed one of the principal drawbacks of every kind of interventionism that it is so difficult to reverse the process.

Socialism, p. 440

Every step which leads from capitalism toward planning is necessarily a step nearer to absolutism and dictatorship.

Omnipotent Government, p. 53

INVESTMENT

There is no such thing as a nonspeculative investment. In a changing economy action always involves speculation. Investments may be good or bad, but they are always speculative.

Human Action, p. 514; p. 517

JUDGMENT

All judgments of value are personal and subjective. There are no judgments of value other than those asserting I prefer, I like better, I wish.

Theory and History, p. 22

JUSTICE

The notion of justice makes sense only when referring to a definite system of norms which in itself is assumed to be uncontested and safe against any criticism.

Human Action, p. 716; p. 720

There is no such thing as an absolute notion of justice not referring to a definite system of social organization. . . . There is neither right nor wrong outside the social nexus.

Human Action, p. 717; p. 721

The idea of justice refers always to social cooperation.

Human Action, p. 717; p. 721

Conduct suited to preserve social cooperation is just, conduct detrimental to the preservation of society is unjust.

Theory and History, p. 54

KANT, IMMANUEL

It is nonsensical to consider Kant a precursor of Nazism. Kant advocated eternal peace between nations.

Omnipotent Government, pp. 140–41

In his book on Eternal Peace, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) suggested that government should be forbidden to finance wars by borrowing. He expected that the warlike spirit would dwindle if all countries had to pay cash for their wars.

Economic Freedom and Interventionism, p. 99.

KEYNES

A dictum of Lord Keynes: “In the long run we are all dead.” I do not question the truth of this statement; I even consider it as the only correct declaration of the neo-British Cambridge school.

Planning for Freedom, p. 7

It is the typical policy of après nous le déluge. Lord Keynes, the champion of this policy, says: “In the long run we are all dead.” But unfortunately nearly all of us outlive the short run. We are destined to spend decades paying for the easy money orgy of a few years.

Omnipotent Government, p. 252

For what many people have admiringly called Keynes’s “brilliance of style” and “mastery of language” were, in fact, cheap rhetorical tricks.

Planning for Freedom, p. 55

The unprecedented success of Keynesianism is due to the fact that it provides an apparent justification for the “deficit spending” policies of contemporary governments. It is the pseudo-philosophy of those who can think of nothing else than to dissipate the capital accumulated by previous generations.

Planning for Freedom, p. 71

Keynes did not teach us how to perform the “miracle . . . of turning a stone into bread,” but the not at all miraculous procedure of eating the seed corn.

Planning for Freedom, p. 71

What he really did was to write an apology for the prevailing policies of governments.

Planning for Freedom, p. 69

The essence of Keynesianism is its complete failure to conceive the role that saving and capital accumulation play in the improvement of economic conditions.

Planning for Freedom, p. 207

They [Keynesians] blithely assume that the state has unlimited means at its disposal.

Planning for Freedom, p. 90

After 15 million human beings had perished in the war, the foremost statesmen of the world were assembled to give mankind a new international order and lasting peace . . . and the British Empire’s financial expert was amused by the rustic style of the French Prime Minister’s footwear.

Planning for Freedom, p. 56

In old fashioned language, Keynes proposed cheating the workers.

Economic Policy, p. 70

Keynes did not add any new idea to the body of inflationist fallacies, a thousand times refuted by economists. His teachings were even more contradictory and inconsistent than those of his predecessors who, like Silvio Gesell, were dismissed as monetary cranks. He merely knew how to cloak the plea for inflation and credit expansion in the sophisticated terminology of mathematical economics.

Human Action, p. 787; p. 793

The fallacies implied in the Keynesian full-employment doctrine are, in a new attire, essentially the same errors which [Adam] Smith and [Jean Baptiste] Say long since demolished.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 464

Keynes did not refute Say’s Law. He rejected it emotionally, but he did not advance a single tenable argument to invalidate its rationale.

Planning for Freedom, p. 70

KNOWLEDGE

Man can never become omniscient. He can never be absolutely certain that his inquiries were not misled and that what he considers as certain truth is not error. All that man can do is to submit all his theories again and again to the most critical reexamination.

Human Action, p. 68; p. 68

Every branch of knowledge has its own merits and its own rights. Economists have never tried to belittle or deny the significance of economic history. Neither do real historians object to the study of economics.

Human Action, p. 864; p. 868

Human reasoning does not have the power to exhaust completely the content of the universe.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 48

Cognition is furthered only by clarity and distinctness, never by compromises.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 206

LABOR

Wages are not paid for labor expended, but for the achievements of labor, which differ widely in quality and quantity.

Human Action, p. 134; p. 134

Free labor is incomparably more productive than slave labor.

LAISSEZ FAIRE

If one rejects laissez faire on account of man’s fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action.

Planning for Freedom, p. 44

Laissez faire does not mean: let soulless mechanical forces operate. It means: let individuals choose how they want to cooperate in the social division of labor and let them determine what the entrepreneurs should produce. Planning means: let the government alone choose and enforce its rulings by the apparatus of coercion and compulsion.

Planning for Freedom, p. 45

Laissez faire means: Let the common man choose and act; do not force him to yield to a dictator.

Human Action, p. 727; p. 732

Laissez faire, laissez passer does not mean: let the evils last. On the contrary, it means: do not interfere with the operation of the market because such interference must necessarily restrict output and make people poorer. It means furthermore: do not abolish or cripple the capitalist system which, in spite of all obstacles put in its way by governments and politicians, has raised the standard of living of the masses in an unprecedented way.

Omnipotent Government, p. x

What transformed the world of horse-drawn carriages, sailing ships, and windmills step by step into a world of airplanes and electronics was the laissez-faire principle.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 127

The greatness of the nineteenth century consisted in the fact that to some extent the ideas of Classical economics became the dominant philosophy of state and society. They transformed the traditional status society into nations of free citizens, royal absolutism into representative government, and above all, the poverty of the masses . . . into the well-being of the many under capitalistic laissez faire.

The Historical Setting of the Austrian School, p. 44

LANGUAGE

The most important medium for social co-operation is language. Language bridges the chasm between individuals and only with its help can one man communicate to another something at least of what he is feeling . . . without it, there could be no thought but only instinct, no will but only impulse.

Socialism, p. 286

Nothing links men more closely together than a community of language, and nothing segregates them more effectively than a difference of language.

Omnipotent Government, p. 123

With the progress of the semantic confusion which has converted the meaning of political terms into their very opposite, the epithet “democratic” is now lavishly spent.

Human Action, p. 838; p. 842

Community of language binds and difference of language separates persons and peoples.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 13

Thought is bound up with speech. The thinker’s conceptual edifice is built on the elements of language.

Socialism, p. 286

Whoever wants to speak with his fellow men and to understand what they say must use their language. Everyone must therefore strive to understand and speak the language of his environment. For that reason individuals and minorities adopt the language of the majority.

Nation, State, and Economy, pp. 27–28

Once the youth learns the language of the country, however, there begins that process of adaptation to the environment that finally leads to complete assimilation.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 117

LAW

Liberalism, which demands full freedom of the economy, seeks to dissolve the difficulties that the diversity of political arrangements pits against the development of trade by separating the economy from the state. It strives for the greatest possible unification of law, in the last analysis for world unity of law. But it does not believe that to reach this goal, great empires or even a world empire must be created.

Nation, State, and Economy, pp. 37–38

No wonder that all who have had something new to offer humanity have had nothing good to say of the state or its laws!

Liberalism, p. 58

The total complex of the rules according to which those at the helm employ compulsion and coercion is called law. Yet the characteristic feature of the state is not these rules, as such, but the application or threat of violence. A state whose chiefs recognize but one rule, to do whatever seems at the moment to be expedient in their eyes, is a state without law. It does not make any difference whether or not these tyrants are “benevolent.”

Omnipotent Government, p. 46

The moral precepts and the laws of the country are means by which men seek to attain certain ends. Whether or not these ends can really be attained this way depends on the laws of the universe. The man-made laws are suitable if they are fit to attain these ends and contrary to purpose if they are not. They are open to examination from the point of view of their suitableness or unsuitableness.

Human Action, p. 756; pp. 761–62

What counts is not the letter of the law but the substantive content of the legal norm.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 173

LAW OF THE JUNGLE

What elevates man above all other animals is the cognition that peaceful cooperation under the principle of the division of labor is a better method to preserve life and to remove felt uneasiness than indulging in pitiless biological competition for a share in the scarce means of subsistence provided by nature. Guided by this insight, man alone among all living beings consciously aims at substituting social cooperation for what philosophers have called the state of nature or bellum omnium contra omnes or the law of the jungle.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 97

LEISURE

Among the amenities which civilized man can enjoy in a more abundant way than his less civilized ancestors there is also the enjoyment of more leisure time.

Human Action, p. 133; p. 133