The Quotable Mises

LENIN

Lenin’s ideal was to build a nation’s production effort according to the model of the post office.

Liberty and Property, p. 14

In his life and his reading he remained so far removed from the facts of economic life that he was as great a stranger to the work of the bourgeoisie as a Hottentot to the work of an explorer taking geographical measurements.

Socialism, p. 189

Lenin was cynical enough to say that revolutions must be achieved with the catchwords of the day. And he achieved his own revolution by affirming publicly—against his better conviction—the catchwords that had taken hold of public opinion.

Omnipotent Government, p. 127

All that Lenin learned about business from the tales of his comrades who occasionally sat in business offices was that it required a lot of scribbling, recording, and ciphering. Thus, he declares that “accounting and control” are the chief things necessary for the organizing and correct functioning of society. . . . Here we have the philosophy of the filing clerk in its full glory.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, pp. 24–25

LIBERTY

Liberty is always freedom from the government.

Liberty and Property, p. 19

It is a fact that a hundred years ago only a few people anticipated the over-powering momentum which the anti-libertarian ideas were destined to acquire in a very short time. The ideal of liberty seemed to be so firmly rooted that everybody thought that no reactionary movement could ever succeed in eradicating it.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 94

LITERATURE

Literature is not conformism, but dissent. Those authors who merely repeat what everybody approves and wants to hear are of no importance. What counts alone is the innovator, the dissenter, the harbinger of things unheard of, the man who rejects the traditional standards and aims at substituting new values and ideas for old ones. He is by necessity anti-authoritarian and anti-governmental, irreconcilably opposed to the immense majority of his contemporaries. He is precisely the author whose books the greater part of the public does not buy.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 51

It is true that most of the novels and plays published today are mere trash. Nothing else can be expected when thousands of volumes are written every year. Our age could still some day be called an age of the flowering of literature if only one out of a thousand books published would prove to be equal to the great books of the past.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 52

It is not the fault of capitalism that the common man does not appreciate uncommon books.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 52

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 faction for the semibarbarians. But this does not prevent great authors from creating imperishable works.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 79

LOGIC

The logical structure of human thought is immutable throughout the whole course of time and is the same for all races, nations, and classes.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 204

We can speak to each other only because we can appeal to something common to all of us, namely, the logical structure of reason.

Omnipotent Government, p. 143

Polylogism denies the uniformity of the logical structure of the human mind. Every social class, every nation, race, or period of history is equipped with a logic that differs from the logic of other classes, nations, races, or ages. Hence bourgeois economics differs from proletarian economics, German physics from the physics of other nations, Aryan mathematics from Semitic mathematics.

Theory and History, pp. 31–32

Polylogism is not a philosophy or an epistemological theory. It is an attitude of narrow-minded fanatics, who cannot imagine that anybody could be more reasonable or more clever than they themselves. Nor is polylogism scientific. It is rather the replacement of reasoning and science by superstitions. It is the characteristic mentality of an age of chaos.

Omnipotent Government, p. 147

LOOPHOLE

What is a loophole? If the law does not punish a definite action or does not tax a definite thing, this is not a loophole. It is simply the law.

Defense, Controls, and Inflation, p. 115

LOVE

The evolution which has led from the principle of violence to the contractual principle has based these relations on free choice in love. The woman may deny herself to anyone, she may demand fidelity and constancy from the man to whom she gives herself. Only in this way is the foundation laid for the development of woman’s individuality.

Socialism, p. 91

The truth is that love and marriage were separate and people did not expect marriage to give them lasting and unclouded happiness. Only when the idea of contract and consent has been imposed on marriage does the wedded couple demand that their union shall satisfy desire permanently.

Socialism, p. 85

LUXURIES

Luxury is the roadmaker of progress.

Socialism, p. 177

Every innovation makes its appearance as a “luxury” of the few well-to-do. After industry has become aware of it, the luxury then becomes a “necessity” for all.

A Critique of Interventionism, p. 158

The luxury of today is the necessity of tomorrow. Every advance first comes into being as the luxury of a few rich people, only to become, after a time, an indispensable necessity taken for granted by everyone. Luxury consumption provides industry with the stimulus to discover and introduce new, things. It is one of the dynamic factors in our economy. To it we owe the progressive innovations by which the standard of living of all strata of the population has been gradually raised.

Liberalism, p. 32

In so far as they think consistently, moralists who condemn luxury must recommend the comparatively desireless existence of the wild life roaming in the woods as the ultimate ideal of civilized life.

Socialism, p. 177

Most of us have no sympathy with the rich idler who spends his life in pleasure without ever doing any work. But even he fulfills a function in the life of the social organism. He sets an example of luxury that awakens in the multitude a consciousness of new needs and gives industry the incentive to fulfill them.

Liberalism, pp. 32–33

A great deal of what people in less capitalistic countries consider luxury is a common good in the more capitalistically developed countries.

A Critique of Interventionism, p. 158

MAJORITY RULE

In the political field it is always the will of the majority that prevails, and the minorities must yield to it.

Liberty and Property, p. 12

In the political sphere, there is no means for an individual or a small group of individuals to disobey the will of the majority. But in the intellectual field private property makes rebellion possible.

Liberty and Property, p. 12

[They knew that] all men are liable to error and that it could happen that the majority, deluded by faulty doctrines propagated by irresponsible demagogues, could embark upon policies that would result in disaster, even in the entire destruction of civilization.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 93

When any sort of difference arises between law and opinion, a reaction must necessarily follow; a movement sets in against that part of the law that is felt to be unjust. Such conflicts always tend to end in a victory of opinion over the law; ultimately the views of the ruling class become embodied in the law.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 229

MARKET

Within the market society each serves all his fellow citizens and each is served by them. It is a system of mutual exchange of services and commodities, a mutual giving and receiving.

Omnipotent Government, p. 49

The fundamental law of the market is: the customer is always right.

Economic Freedom and Interventionism, p. 6

MARKET PROCESS

The market process is a daily repeated plebiscite, and it ejects inevitably from the ranks of profitable people those who do not employ their property according to the orders given by the public.

Liberty and Property, p. 10

MARRIAGE

As the idea of contract enters the Law of Marriage, it breaks the rule of the male, and makes the wife a partner with equal rights. From a one-sided relationship resting on force, marriage thus becomes a mutual agreement.

Socialism, p. 82

Thus marriage, as we know it, has come into existence entirely as a result of the contractual idea penetrating into this sphere of life. All our cherished ideals of marriage have grown out of this idea. That marriage unites one man and one woman, that it can be entered into only with the free will of both parties, that it imposes a duty of mutual fidelity, that a man’s violations of the marriage vows are to be judged no differently from a woman’s, that the rights of husband and wife are essentially the same—these principles develop from the contractual attitude to the problem of marital life.

Socialism, pp. 82–83

In the modern contractual marriage, which takes place at the desire of husband and wife, marriage and love are united.

Socialism, p. 83

MARTYRDOM

There have always been men who voluntarily renounced many pleasures and satisfactions in order to do what they considered right and moral. Men have preferred martyrdom to the renunciation of what they believed to be true. They have chosen poverty and exile because they wanted to be free in the search for truth and wisdom. All that is noblest in the progress of civilization, welfare, and enlightenment has been the achievement of such men, who braved every danger and defied the tyranny of powerful kings and fanatical masses.

Omnipotent Government, p. 114

MARXISM

The essence of Marxian philosophy is this: We are right because we are the spokesmen of the rising proletarian class. Discursive reasoning cannot invalidate our teachings, for they are inspired by the supreme power that determines the destiny of mankind. Our adversaries are wrong because they lack the intuition that guides our minds.

Human Action, p. 84; p. 83

The Marxian dogma according to which socialism is bound to come “with the inexorability of a law of nature” is just an arbitrary surmise devoid of any proof.

Planning for Freedom, p. 33

Marx’s economic teachings are essentially a garbled rehash of the theories of Adam Smith and, first of all, of Ricardo.

Theory and History, pp. 124–25

Marxism is a revolutionary doctrine. It expressly declares that the design of the prime mover will be accomplished by civil war. . . . The liquidation of all dissenters will establish the undisputed supremacy of the absolute eternal values. This formula for the solution of conflicts of value judgments is certainly not new. It is a device known and practiced from time immemorial. Kill the infidels! Burn the heretics! What is new is merely the fact that today it is sold to the public under the label of “science.”

Theory and History, p. 51

For Marx and his parties, the interests of the individual classes are irreconcilably opposed to each other. Each class knows precisely what his class interests are and how to realize them. Therefore, there can only be warfare.

A Critique of Interventionism, p. 118

Even the most orthodox Marxians are not bold enough to support seriously its essential thesis, namely, that capitalism results in a progressive impoverishment of the wage earners.

Human Action, p. 691; p. 694

All the sophisticated syllogisms of the ponderous volumes published by Marx, Engels, and hundreds of Marxian authors cannot conceal the fact that the only and ultimate source of Marx’s prophecy is an alleged inspiration by virtue of which Marx claims to have guessed the plans of the mysterious powers determining the course of history. Like Hegel, Marx was a prophet communicating to the people the revelation that an inner voice had imparted to him.

Human Action, p. 691; p. 695

The incomparable success of Marxism is due to the prospect it offers of fulfilling those dream-aspirations and dreams of vengeance which have been so deeply imbedded in the human soul from time immemorial. It promises a Paradise on earth, a Land of Heart’s Desire full of happiness and enjoyment, and—sweeter still to the losers in life’s game—humiliation of all who are stronger and better than the multitude. Logic and reasoning, which might show the absurdity of such dreams of bliss and revenge, are to be thrust aside. . . . It is against Logic, against Science and against the activity of thought itself.

Socialism, p. 7

The Bolshevists persistently tell us that religion is opium for the people. Marxism is indeed opium for those who might take to thinking and must therefore be weaned from it.

Socialism, p. 7

Marx and Engels never tried to refute their opponents with argument. They insulted, ridiculed, derided, slandered, and traduced them, and in the use of these methods their followers are not less expert. Their polemic is directed never against the argument of the opponent, but always against his person.

Socialism, p. 19

He did not know what to say in the planned 52nd chapter of the third volume and this embarrassment induced him to desist from finishing his great treatise. The essential dogma of the Marxian philosophy, the class conflict doctrine which he and his friend Engels had propagated for many decades, was unmasked as a flop.

Economic Freedom and Interventionism, p, 121

They have no greater perception of the essentials of economic life than the errand boy, whose only idea of the work of the entrepreneur is that he covers pieces of paper with letters and figures.

Socialism, p. 189

In its most fundamental contentions Marxism has never risen above the level of a doctrine for the soap box orator.

Socialism, p. 305

Within Marxism there is no place for free thought.

Socialism, p. 319

The Marxians’ love of democratic institutions was a stratagem only, a pious fraud for the deception of the masses. Within a socialist community there is no room left for freedom. There can be no freedom of the press where the government owns every printing office. There can be no free choice of profession or trade where the government is the only employer and assigns everyone the task he must fulfill. There can be no freedom to settle where one chooses when the government has the power to fix one’s place of work. There can be no real freedom of scientific research where the government owns all the libraries, archives, and laboratories and has the right to send anyone to a place where he cannot continue his investigation. There can be no freedom in art and literature where the government determines who shall create them. There can be neither freedom of conscience nor of speech where the government has the power to remove any opponent to a climate which is detrimental to his health, or to assign him duties which surpass his strength and ruin him both physically and intellectually.

Omnipotent Government, pp. 51–52

In the eyes of the Marxians, Ricardo, Freud, Bergson, and Einstein are wrong because they are bourgeois; in the eyes of the Nazis they are wrong because they are Jews.

Omnipotent Government, p. 145

MATERIAL GOODS

Strictly speaking, people do not long for tangible goods as such, but for the services which these goods are fitted to render them.

Human Action, p. 234; p. 233

In reality no food is valued solely for its nutritive power and no garment or house solely for the protection it affords against cold weather and rain. It cannot be denied that the demand for goods is widely influenced by metaphysical, religious, and ethical considerations, by aesthetic value judgments, by customs, habits, prejudice, tradition, changing fashions, and many other things.

Human Action, p. 234; p. 233

MATERIAL WELL-BEING

Notwithstanding all declarations to the contrary, the immense majority of men aim first of all at an improvement of the material conditions of well-being. They want more and better food, better homes and clothes and a thousand other amenities. They strive after abundance and health.

Human Action, p. 96; p. 96

The average American worker enjoys amenities for which Croesus, Crassus, the Medici, and Louis XIV would have envied him.

Human Action, p. 265; p. 265

The increase in per capita consumption [material well-being] in America as compared with the conditions a quarter of a century ago is not an achievement of laws and executive orders. It is an accomplishment of businessmen who enlarged the size of their factories or built new ones.

Planned Chaos, p. 15

The immense majority strives after a greater and better supply of food, clothes, homes, and other material amenities. In calling a rise in the masses’ standard of living progress and improvement, economists do not espouse a mean materialism. They simply establish the fact that people are motivated by the urge to improve the material conditions of their existence.

Human Action, pp. 193–94; p. 193

The only means to increase a nation’s welfare is to increase and to improve the output of products.

Planning for Freedom, p. 6

The preservation and the further improvement of what is called “the American way of life” and “an American standard of living” depends on the maintenance and the further increase of the capital invested in American business.

Planning for Freedom, p. 92

A nation cannot prosper if its members are not fully aware of the fact that what alone can improve their conditions is more and better production. And this can only be brought about by increased saving and capital accumulation.

Planning for Freedom, pp. 92–93

There is but one means to improve the material well-being of men, viz., to accelerate the increase in capital accumulated as against population.

Planning for Freedom, p. 143

Not through war and victory but only through work can a nation create the preconditions for the well-being of its members.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 87

MEDIA

Modern tyrants have things much easier than their predecessors. He who rules the means of exchange of ideas and of goods in the economy based on the division of labor has his rule more firmly grounded than ever an imperator before. The rotary press is easy to put into fetters, and whoever controls it need not fear the competition of the merely spoken or written word. Things were much more difficult for the Inquisition. No Phillip II could paralyze freedom of thought more severely than a modern censor. How much more efficient than the guillotine of Robespierre are the machine guns of Trotsky!

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 216

MENGER, CARL

Nazi economists wasted much time in searching the genealogical tree of Carl Menger for Jewish ancestors; they did not succeed.

Omnipotent Government, p. 147

METAPHYSICS

It is not to be denied that the loftiest theme that human thought can set for itself is reflection on ultimate questions. Whether such reflection can accomplish anything is doubtful.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 49

One may hold poets, prophets, or promulgators of new values in higher esteem than scientists. But in no case is one free to confound these two fundamentally different functions.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 49

Metaphysics and science perform different functions. They cannot, therefore, adopt the same procedures, nor are they alike in their goals. They can work side by side without enmity because they need not dispute each other’s domain as long as they do not misconstrue their own character. A conflict arises only when one or the other attempts to overstep the boundary between them.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 49

MIGRATION

The principles of freedom, which have gradually been gaining ground everywhere since the eighteenth century, gave people freedom of movement.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 58

A nation that believes in itself and its future, a nation that means to stress the sure feeling that its members are bound to one another not merely by accident of birth but also by the common possession of a culture that is valuable above all to each of them, would necessarily be able to remain unperturbed when it saw individual persons shift to other nations.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 76

MILITARY

The conduct of military affairs is characterized by a stubborn hostility to every attempt toward improvement.

Bureaucracy, p. 67

The military state is a state of bandits. It prefers to live on booty and tribute.

Socialism, p. 221

In proportion as armaments increased the sales of munitions plants, they reduced the sales of all other industries.

Omnipotent Government, p. 133

For all nations the necessity of being ready for defense will mean a heavy burden. Not only economic but moral and political conditions will be affected. Militarism will supplant democracy; civil liberties will vanish wherever military discipline must be supreme.

Omnipotent Government, p. 287

The characteristic feature of militarism is not the fact that a nation has a powerful army or navy. It is the paramount role assigned to the army within the political structure. Even in peacetime the army is supreme; it is the predominant factor in political life. The subjects must obey the government as soldiers must obey their superiors. Within a militarist community there is no freedom; there are only obedience and discipline.

Omnipotent Government, p. 35

MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

The armament industry created militarism and imperialism, however, just as little as, say, the distilleries created alcoholism or publishing houses trashy literature. The supply of weapons did not call forth the demand, but rather the other way around.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 155

The leaders of the armament industry are not themselves bloodthirsty; they would just as gladly earn money by producing other commodities. They produce cannons and guns because demand for them exists; they would just as gladly produce peacetime articles if they could do a better business with them.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 155

MIND

The person who has a low opinion of the mind is not the one who wants to make it free from all external regulation but rather the one who wants to control it by penal laws and machine guns.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 215

MINORITIES

To be a member of a national minority involves multitudinous political disadvantages. The wider the functions of the political authority the more burdensome are these disadvantages.

Socialism, p. 202

Because of the enormous power that today stands at the command of the state, a national minority must expect the worst from a majority of a different nationality. As long as the state is granted the vast powers which it has today and which public opinion considers to be its right, the thought of having to live in a state whose government is in the hands of members of a foreign nationality is positively terrifying. It is frightful to live in a state in which at every turn one is exposed to persecution—masquerading under the guise of justice—by a ruling majority. It is dreadful to be handicapped even as a child in school on account of one’s nationality and to be in the wrong before every judicial and administrative authority because one belongs to a national minority.

Liberalism, p. 141

MONETARY POLICY

All monetary policies encounter the difficulty that the effects of any measures taken . . . can neither be foreseen in advance, nor their nature and magnitude be determined even after they have already occurred.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 271

The interests of the capitalists are scarcely ever represented in monetary policy.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 414

MONEY

Money is regarded as the cause of theft and murder, of deception and betrayal. Money is blamed when the prostitute sells her body and when the bribed judge perverts the law. It is money against which the moralist declaims when he wishes to oppose excessive materialism.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 111

Money is merely the commonly used medium of exchange; it plays only an intermediary role. What the seller wants ultimately to receive in exchange for the commodities sold is other commodities. Every commodity produced is therefore a price, as it were, for other commodities produced. The situation of the producer of any commodity is improved by any increase in the production of other commodities.

Planning for Freedom, p. 66

Only the naive inflationists could believe that government could enrich mankind through fiat money.

A Critique of Interventionism, p. 23

For two hundred years the governments have interfered with the market’s choice of the money medium. Even the most bigoted étatists do not venture to assert that this interference has proved beneficial.

Human Action, p. 419; p. 422

Fiat money is a money consisting of mere tokens which can neither be employed for any industrial purposes nor convey a claim against anybody.

Human Action, p. 426; p. 429

The governments alone are responsible for the spread of the superstitious awe with which the common man looks upon every bit of paper upon which the treasury or agencies which it controls have printed the magical words legal tender.

Human Action, pp. 444–45; p. 448

No technological computation and calculation would be possible in an environment that would not employ a generally used medium of exchange, money.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 127

Money is nothing but a medium of exchange and it completely fulfills its function when the exchange of goods and services is carried on more easily with its help than would be possible to means of barter.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 31

Where the free exchange of goods and services is unknown, money is not wanted.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 41

The simple statement, that money is a commodity whose economic function is to facilitate the interchange of goods and services, does not satisfy those writers who are interested rather in the accumulation of material than in the increase of knowledge.

The Theory of Money and Credit, pp. 46–47

Money has thus become an aid that the human mind is no longer able to dispense with in making economic calculations.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 62

Money has no utility other than that arising from the possibility of obtaining other economic goods in exchange for it.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 118

The valuation of the monetary unit depends not upon the wealth of the country, but upon the ratio between the quantity of money and the demand for it, so that even the richest country may have a bad currency and the poorest country a good one.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 278

MONEY SUPPLY

If it were really possible to substitute credit expansion (cheap money) for the accumulation of capital goods by saving, there would not be any poverty in the world.

Planning for Freedom, p. 190

Depression is the aftermath of credit expansion.

Planning for Freedom, p. 7

If you increase the quantity of money, you bring about the lowering of the purchasing power of the monetary unit.

Economic Policy, p. 66

The quantity of money available in the whole economy is always sufficient to secure for everybody all that money does and can do.

Human Action, p. 418; p. 421

All present-day governments are fanatically committed to an easy money policy.

Human Action, p. 570; p. 572

No increase in the welfare of the members of a society can result from the availability of an additional quantity of money.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 102

No nation need fear at any time to have less money than it needs.

The Theory of Money and Credit, pp. 208–09

In all countries where inflation has been rapid, it has been observed that the decrease in the value of the money has occurred faster than the increase in its quantity.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 259

The entrepreneurs who approach banks for loans are suffering from shortage of capital; it is never shortage of money in the proper sense of the word.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 349

MONOPOLIES

The monopoly problem mankind has to face today is not an outgrowth of the operation of the market economy. It is a product of purposive action on the part of governments. It is not one of the evils inherent in capitalism as the demagogues trumpet. It is, on the contrary, the fruit of policies hostile to capitalism and intent upon sabotaging and destroying its operation.

Human Action, p. 363; p. 366

The widespread view that the monopolist can fix prices at will, that—in common phrase—he can dictate prices, is as erroneous as the conclusion, derived from this view, that he has in his hands the power to do whatever he likes.

Socialism, p. 344

Most cartels and trusts would never have been set up had not the governments created the necessary conditions by protectionist measures. Manufacturing and commercial monopolies owe their origin not to a tendency immanent in capitalist economy but to governmental interventionist policy directed against free trade and laissez-faire.

Socialism, p. 349

MYSTERY

We are still far from understanding the ultimate and most profound secret of life, the principle of the origin of organisms. Who knows whether we shall ever discover it?

Socialism, p. 259

There is within the infinite expanse of what is called the universe or nature a small field in which man’s conscious conduct can influence the course of events.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 11

Perhaps there are somewhere in the infinite universe beings whose minds outrank our minds to the same extent as our minds surpass those of the insects. Perhaps there will once somewhere live beings who will look upon us with the same condescension as we look upon amoebae.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 17

Scientific research will never succeed in providing a full answer to what is called the riddles of the universe. It can never show how out of an inconceivable nothing emerged all that is and how one day all that exists may again disappear and the “nothing” alone will remain.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 53

Man is only a tiny speck in the infinite vastness of the universe and that the whole history of mankind is but a fleeting episode in the endless flux of eternity.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 125

Man’s place in that part of the universe about which we can learn something is certainly modest only.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 125

NATIONALISM

The older nationality principle is peaceful; it wants no war between peoples and believes that no reason for one exists.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 43

Nationalist policies, which always begin by aiming at the ruination of one’s neighbor, must, in the final analysis, lead to the ruination of all.

Liberalism, p. 144

The nationality principle above all bears no sword against members of other nations. It is directed in tyrannos. Therefore, above all, there is also no opposition between national and citizen-of-the-world attitudes. The idea of freedom is both national and cosmopolitan. It is revolutionary, for it wants to abolish all rule incompatible with its principles, but it is also pacifistic. What basis for war could there still be, once all peoples had been set free? Political liberalism concurs on that point with economic liberalism, which proclaims the solidarity of interests among peoples.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 35

The further a nation goes on the road toward public control of business, the more it is forced to withdraw from the international division of labor.

Omnipotent Government, p. 281

It would be a mistake to ascribe the ascendancy of modern nationalism to human wickedness. The nationalists are not innately aggressive men; they become aggressive through their conception of nationalism. They are confronted with conditions which were unknown to the champions of the old principle of self-determination. And their etatist prejudices prevent them from finding a solution for the problems they have to face other than that provided by aggressive nationalism.

Omnipotent Government, pp. 81–82

Present-day protectionism is a necessary corollary of the domestic policy of government interference with business. Interventionism begets economic nationalism. It thus kindles the antagonism resulting in war. An abandonment of economic nationalism is not feasible if nations cling to interference with business. Free trade in international relations requires domestic free trade.

Omnipotent Government, p. 66

The nationalists of all countries have succeeded in convincing their followers that only the policies they recommend are really advantageous to the well-being of the whole nation and of all its honest citizens.

Omnipotent Government, p. 115

Aggressive nationalism is the necessary derivative of the policies of interventionism and national planning.

Human Action, p. 819; p. 823

Economic nationalism, the necessary complement of domestic interventionism, hurts the interests of foreign peoples and thus creates international conflict. It suggests the idea of amending this unsatisfactory state of affairs by war.

Human Action, p. 827; p. 831

Interventionism generates economic nationalism, and economic nationalism generates bellicosity. If men and commodities are prevented from crossing the borderlines, why should not the armies try to pave the way for them?

Human Action, p. 828; p. 832

NATURAL SCIENCES

In the realm of nature we cannot know anything about final causes, by reference to which events can be explained. But in the field of human actions there is the finality of acting men. Men make choices. They aim at certain ends and they apply means in order to attain the ends sought.

Omnipotent Government, p. 120

Nothing could by more mistaken than the now fashionable attempt to apply the methods and concepts of the natural sciences to the solution of social problems.

Omnipotent Government, p. 120

What makes natural science possible is the power to experiment; what makes social science possible is the power to grasp or to comprehend the meaning of human action.

Money, Method, and the Market Process, p. 9

NATURE

In nature there is nothing that could be called freedom. Nature is inexorable necessity.

Planning for Freedom, p. 215

In nature there prevail irreconcilable conflicts of interest. The means of subsistence are scarce. Proliferation tends to outrun subsistence. Only the fittest plants and animals survive. The antagonism between an animal starving to death and another that snatches the food away from it is implacable.

Human Action, pp. 273–74; p. 273

It is illusory to maintain that individuals in renouncing the alleged blessings of a fabulous state of nature and entering into society have foregone some advantages and have a fair claim to be indemnified for what they have lost. The idea that anybody would have fared better under an asocial state of mankind and is wronged by the very existence of society is absurd. Thanks to the higher productivity of social cooperation the human species has multiplied far beyond the margin of subsistence offered by the conditions prevailing in ages with a rudimentary degree of the division of labor. Each man enjoys a standard of living much higher than that of his savage ancestors. The natural condition of man is extreme poverty and insecurity. It is romantic nonsense to lament the passing of the happy days of primitive barbarism.

Human Action, p. 165; p. 165

Nature is not bountiful but stingy. It has restricted the supply of all things indispensable for the preservation of human life. It has populated the world with animals and plants to whom the impulse to destroy human life and welfare is inwrought. It displays powers and elements whose operation is damaging to human life and to human endeavors to preserve it. Man’s survival and well-being are an achievement of the skill with which he has utilized the main instrument with which nature has equipped him—reason.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 81

Men, cooperating under the system of the division of labor, have created all the wealth which the daydreamers consider as a free gift of nature.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 81

For the primary task of reason is to cope consciously with the limitations imposed upon man by nature, to fight against scarcity.

Human Action, p. 237; p. 236

He who does not know how to safeguard his equilibrium when surrounded by motorcycles and telephones will not find it in the jungle or dessert.

A Critique of Interventionism, p. 130

Love of nature and appreciation of the beauties of the landscape were foreign to the rural population. The inhabitants of the cities brought them to the countryside. It was the city-dwellers who began to appreciate the land as nature, while the countrymen valued it only from the point of view of its productivity for hunting, lumbering, crop raising and cattle breeding. From time immemorial the rocks and glaciers of the Alps were merely waste land in the eyes of the mountaineers. Only when the townsfolk ventured to climb the peaks, and brought money into the valleys, did they change their minds. The pioneers of mountain climbing and skiing were ridiculed by the indigenous population until they found out that they could derive gain from this eccentricity.

Human Action, p. 641; p. 645

The life of primitive man was an unceasing struggle against the scantiness of the nature-given means for sustenance. In this desperate effort to secure bare survival, many individuals and whole families, tribes, and races succumbed. Primitive man was always haunted by the specter of death from starvation. Civilization has freed us from these perils.

Human Action, p. 600; p. 602

Not shepherds, but sophisticated aristocrats and city-dwellers were the authors of bucolic poetry. Daphnis and Chloë are creations of fancies far removed from earthy concerns. No less removed from the soil is the modern political myth of the soil. It did not blossom from the moss of the forests and the loam of the fields, but from the pavements of the cities and the carpets of the salons. The farmers make use of it because they find it a practical means of obtaining political privileges which raise the prices of their products and of their farms.

Human Action, p. 641; p. 645

In Nature too, much may exist that we do not like. But we cannot change the essential character of natural events. If, for example, someone thinks—and there are some who have maintained as much—that the way in which man ingests his food, digests it, and incorporates it into his body is disgusting, one cannot argue the point with him. One must say to him: There is only this way or starvation.

Liberalism, p. 88

NAZISM

The foreign critics condemn the Nazi system as capitalist. . . . But this is one charge against the Nazis that is unfounded.

Omnipotent Government, p. 225

This is socialism in the outward guise of capitalism.

Omnipotent Government, p. 56

The mass slaughters perpetrated in the Nazi horror camps are too horrible to be adequately described by words. But they were the logical and consistent application of doctrines and policies parading as applied science and approved by some men who in a sector of the natural sciences have displayed acumen and technical skill in laboratory research.

Planned Chaos, p. 79

The doctrines of Nazism are vicious, but they do not essentially disagree with the ideologies of socialism and nationalism as approved by other peoples’ public opinion. What characterized the Nazis was only the consistent application of these ideologies to the special conditions of Germany.

Human Action, p. 187; p. 187

There was no secrecy about the ambitions of the Nazis. The Nazis themselves advertised them in innumerable books and pamphlets, and in every issue of their numerous newspapers and periodicals. Nobody can reproach the Nazis with having concocted their plots clandestinely. He who had ears to hear and eyes to see could not help but know all about their aspirations.

Omnipotent Government, p. 12

The main point in the propaganda of Nazism between 1919 and 1933 was: World Jewry and Western capitalism have caused your misery; we will fight these foes, thus rendering you more prosperous.

Omnipotent Government, p. 115

Tacitus informs us that the German tribes of his day considered it clumsy and shameful to acquire with sweat what could be won by bloodshed. This is also the first moral principle of the Nazis. They despise individuals and nations eager to profit by serving other people; in their eyes robbery is the noblest way to make a living.

Omnipotent Government, p. 180

The inflation had pauperized the middle classes. The victims joined Hitler. But they did not do so because they had suffered but because they believed that Nazism would relieve them. That a man suffers from bad digestion does not explain why he consults a quack. He consults the quack because he thinks that the man will cure him. If he had other opinions, he would consult a doctor. That there was economic distress in Germany does not account for Nazism’s success.

Omnipotent Government, p. 219

Hitler and his clique conquered Germany by brutal violence, by murder and crime. But the doctrines of Nazism had got hold of the German mind long before then. Persuasion, not violence, had converted the immense majority of the nation to the tenets of militant nationalism. If Hitler had not succeeded in winning the race for dictatorship, somebody else would have won it.

Omnipotent Government, pp. 221–22

Nazism conquered Germany because it never encountered any adequate intellectual resistance.

Omnipotent Government, p. 222

Yet it is clear that both systems, the German and the Russian, must be considered from an economic point of view as socialist.

Omnipotent Government, p. 178

NEW DEAL

The comparatively greater prosperity of the United States is an outcome of the fact that the New Deal did not come in 1900 or 1910, but only in 1933.

Planning for Freedom, p. 136

The government embarked upon a vast scheme for restricting output, raising prices, and subsidizing the farmers. In interfering for the special benefit of the submarginal farmer it did so to the disadvantage of everyone consuming food and cotton and to the disadvantage of the taxpayer.

Omnipotent Government, p. 249

PACIFISM

To be judged quite differently from this older pacifism, which was carried along by general considerations of humanitarianism and horror of bloodshed, is the pacifism of the Enlightenment philosophy of natural law, of economic liberalism, and of political democracy, which has been cultivated since the eighteenth century. It does not arise from a sentiment that calls on the individual and the state to renounce the pursuit of their earthly interests out of thirst for fame or in hope of reward in the beyond; nor does it stand as a separate postulate without organic connection with other moral demands. Rather, pacifism here follows with logical necessity from the entire system of social life. He who, from the utilitarian standpoint, rejects the rule of some over others and demands the full right of self-determination for individuals and peoples has thereby rejected war also.

Nation, State, and Economy, pp. 85–86

All pacifism not based on a liberal economic order built on private ownership of the means of production always remains utopian.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 94

Liberal pacifism demands peace because it considers war useless. That is a view understandable only from the standpoint of the free-trade doctrine as developed in the classical theory of Hume, Smith, and Ricardo. He who wants to prepare a lasting peace must, like Bentham, be a free-trader and a democrat and work with decisiveness for the removal of all political rule over colonies by a mother country and fight for the full freedom of movement of persons and goods. Those and no others are the preconditions of eternal peace. If one wants to make peace, then one must get rid of the possibility of conflicts between peoples. Only the ideas of liberalism and democracy have the power to do that.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 86

PATENTS

If the government objects to monopoly prices for new inventions, it should stop granting patents.

Human Action, p. 760; p. 766

PATERNALISM

Once you begin to admit that it is the duty of the government to control your consumption of alcohol, what can you reply to those who say the control of books and ideas is much more important?

Economic Policy, p. 22

It is a fact that no paternal government, whether ancient or modern, ever shrank from regimenting its subjects’ minds, beliefs, and opinions. If one abolishes man’s freedom to determine his own consumption, one takes all freedoms away. The naive advocates of government interference with consumption delude themselves when they neglect what they disdainfully call the philosophical aspect of the problem. They unwittingly support the case of censorship, inquisition, religious intolerance, and the persecution of dissenters.

Human Action, p. 729; p. 734

PATRIOTISM

Patriotism is the zeal for one’s own nation’s welfare, flowering, and freedom.

Omnipotent Government, p. 2

The sacrifice that is demanded of the soldier serving by compulsion can be compensated only with intangible values, never with material ones.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 166

PEACE

The goal of the domestic policy of liberalism is the same as that of its foreign policy: peace. It aims at peaceful cooperation just as much between nations as within each nation.

Liberalism, p. 105

PERVERSITY

The notions of abnormality and perversity therefore have no place in economics. It does not say that a man is perverse because he prefers the disagreeable, the detrimental, and the painful to the agreeable, the beneficial and the pleasant. It says only that he is different from other people; that he likes what others detest; that he considers useful what others want to avoid; that he takes pleasure in enduring pain which others avoid because it hurts them.

Human Action, p. 95; p. 95

PLANNED ECONOMY

The planned economy is the most rigid system of enslavement history has ever known.

Money, Method, and the Market Process, p. 282

PLATO

Plato was anxious to find a tyrant who would use his power for the realization of the Platonic ideal state. The question whether other people would like or dislike what he himself had in store for them never occurred to Plato.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 95

Plato founded his utopia on the hope that a small group of perfectly wise and morally impeccable philosophers will be available for the supreme conduct of affairs.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 99

POETRY

It has sometimes been asserted that there is more truth in fiction than in history. Insofar as the novel or play is looked upon as a disclosure of the author’s mind, this is certainly correct. The poet always writes about himself, always analyzes his own soul.

Theory and History, p. 280

POLICE POWER

Freedom and liberty always mean freedom from police interference.

Planned Chaos, p. 64

The police officer and the fireman have no better claim to the public’s gratitude than the doctors, the railroad engineers, the welders, the sailors, or the manufacturers of any useful commodity. The traffic cop has no more cause for conceit than the manufacturer of traffic lights.

Bureaucracy, p. 77

It is in the nature of every application of violence that it tends toward a transgression of the limit within which it is tolerated and viewed as legitimate. Even the best discipline cannot always prevent police officers from striking harder than circumstances require, or prison wardens from inflicting brutalities on inmates.

Omnipotent Government, p. 156

The men who are to protect the community against violent aggression easily turn into the most dangerous aggressors. They transgress their mandate. They misuse their power for the oppression of those whom they were expected to defend against oppression. The main political 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

POLITICAL PARTIES

He who is unfit to serve his fellow citizens wants to rule them.

Bureaucracy, p. 92

There are no longer real political parties in the old classical sense, but merely pressure groups.

Economic Policy, p. 96

In the United States, the two-party system of the old days is seemingly still preserved. But this is only a camouflage of the real situation. In fact, the political life of the United States . . . is determined by the struggle and aspirations of pressure groups.

Economic Policy, p. 96

There can be no more grievous misunderstanding of the meaning and nature of liberalism than to think that it would be possible to secure the victory of liberal ideas by resorting to the methods employed today by the other political parties.

Liberalism, p. 158

All modern political parties and all modern party ideologies originated as a reaction on the part of special group interests fighting for a privileged status against liberalism.

Liberalism, p. 160

To the parties of special interests, all political questions appear exclusively as problems of political tactics. Their ultimate goal is fixed for them from the start. Their aim is to obtain, at the cost of the rest of the population, the greatest possible advantages and privileges for the groups they represent. The party platform is intended to disguise this objective and give it a certain appearance of justification, but under no circumstances to announce it publicly as the goal of party policy. The members of the party, in any case, know what their goal is; they do not need to have it explained to them. How much of it ought to be imparted to the world is, however, a purely tactical question.

Liberalism, pp. 175–76

The enemies of liberalism have branded it as the party of the special interests of the capitalists. This is characteristic of their mentality. They simply cannot understand a political ideology as anything but the advocacy of certain special privileges opposed to the general welfare.

Liberalism, p. 183

Many people complain today about the lack of creative statesmanship. However, under the predominance of interventionist ideas, a political career is open only to men who identify themselves with the interests of a pressure group. . . . Service to the short-run interests of a pressure group is not conducive to the development of those qualities which make a great statesman. Statesmanship is invariably long-run policy; but pressure groups do not bother about the long run.

Human Action, p. 866; p. 870

If our community does not beget men who have the power to make sound social principles generally acceptable, civilization is lost, whatever the system of government may be.

Omnipotent Government, p. 119

It is obvious that every constitutional system can be made to work satisfactorily when the rulers are equal to their task. The problem is to find the men fit for office.

Omnipotent Government, p. 120

No politician is any longer interested in the question whether a measure is fit to produce the ends aimed at. What alone counts for him is whether the majority of the voters favor or reject it.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 94

POLITICS

The main political problem is how to prevent the rulers from becoming despots and enslaving the citizenry.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 454

The worst and most dangerous form of absolutist rule is that of an intolerant majority.

Theory and History, p. 67

For the charismatic leader but one thing matters: the faithful performance of his mission no matter what the means he may be forced to resort to. He is above all laws and moral precepts. What he does is always right, and what his opponents do is always wrong.

Theory and History, p. 164

Any attempt to found a party of special interests on the bias of an equal apportionment of privileges among the majority of the population would be utterly senseless. A privilege accruing to the majority ceases to be such.

Liberalism, p. 168

There is an inherent tendency in all governmental power to recognize no restraints on its operation and to extend the sphere of its dominion as much as possible. To control everything, to leave no room for anything to happen of its own accord without the interference of the authorities—this is the goal for which every ruler secretly strives.

Liberalism, p. 67

The characteristic mark of this age of dictators, wars and revolutions is its anticapitalistic bias. Most governments and political parties are eager to restrict the sphere of private initiative and free enterprise.

Planned Chaos, p. 15

The mixing of politics and business not only is detrimental to politics, as is frequently observed, but even much more so to business.

A Critique of Interventionism, p. 162

Political realism, that hodgepodge of cynicism, lack of conscience, and unvarnished selfishness.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 69

POPULATION

The transition to capitalism is thus accompanied by two phenomena: a decline both in fertility rates and in mortality rates. The average duration of life is prolonged.

Human Action, p. 665; p. 669

Man has been able to centuple his progeny and still provide for each individual a much better life than nature offered to his nonhuman ancestors some hundred thousand years ago.

Omnipotent Government, p. 121

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

POSITIVISM

The sciences of human action start from the fact that man purposefully aims at ends he has chosen. It is precisely this that all brands of positivism, behaviorism, and panphysicalism want either to deny altogether or to pass over in silence.

Theory and History, p. 3

The positivists tell us that one day a new scientific discipline will emerge which will make good their promises and will describe in every detail the physical and chemical processes that produce in the body of man definite ideas. But it is evident that such a metaphysical proposition can in no way invalidate the results of the discursive reasoning of the sciences of human action.

Theory and History, p. 3

POVERTY

The riches of the rich are not the cause of the poverty of anybody; the process that makes some people rich is, on the contrary, the corollary of the process that improves many peoples’ want satisfaction. The entrepreneurs, the capitalists and the technologists prosper as far as they succeed in best supplying the consumers.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. II.1

As far as there is unhampered capitalism, there is no longer any question of poverty in the sense in which this term is applied to the conditions of a noncapitalistic society. The increase in population figures does not create supernumerary mouths, but additional hands whose employment produces additional wealth. There are no able-bodied paupers.

Human Action, p. 832; p. 836

POWER

Perhaps they think that they will exercise power for the general good, but that is what all those with power have believed. Power is evil in itself, regardless of who exercises it.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 219

PREJUDICE

Under an unhampered market economy the appraisal of each individual’s effort is detached from any personal considerations and can therefore be free both from bias and dislike. The market passes judgment on the products, not on the producers.

Bureaucracy, p. 38

PRICE

The ultimate source of the determination of prices is the value judgments of the consumers.

Human Action, p. 328; p. 331

Each individual, in buying or not buying and in selling or not selling, contributes his share to the formation of the market prices. But the larger the market is, the smaller is the weight of each individual’s contribution. Thus the structure of market prices appears to the individual as a datum to which he must adjust his own conduct.

Human Action, p. 328; p. 331

It is ultimately always the subjective value judgments of individuals that determine the formation of prices.

Human Action, p. 329; p. 332

There is no such thing as prices outside the market. Prices cannot be constructed synthetically, as it were.

Human Action, p. 392; p. 395

The dangerous fact is that while government is hampered in endeavors to make a commodity cheaper by intervention, it certainly has the power to make it more expensive.

Omnipotent Government, p. 248

When people talk of a “price level,” they have in mind the image of a level of a liquid which goes up or down according to the increase or decrease in its quantity, but which, like a liquid in a tank, always rises evenly. But with prices, there is no such thing as a “level.” Prices do not change to the same extent at the same time. There are always prices that are changing more rapidly, rising or falling more rapidly than other prices.

Economic Policy, p. 59

PRICE CONTROL

Even capital punishment could not make price control work in the days of Emperor Diocletian and the French Revolution.

Defense, Control, and Inflation, pp. 109–10

Economics does not say that isolated government interference with the prices of only one commodity or a few commodities is unfair, bad, or unfeasible. It says that such interference produces results contrary to its purpose, that it makes conditions worse, not better, from the point of view of the government and those backing its interference.

Human Action, p. 758; p. 764

A government that sets out to abolish market prices is inevitably driven toward the abolition of private property; it has to recognize that there is no middle way between the system of private property in the means of production combined with free contract, and the system of common ownership of the means of production, or socialism. It is gradually forced toward compulsory production, universal obligation to labor, rationing of consumption, and, finally, official regulation of the whole of production and consumption.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 281

During thousands of years, in all parts of the inhabited earth, innumerable sacrifices have been made to the chimera of just and reasonable prices. Those who have offended against the laws regulating prices have been heavily punished; their property has been confiscated, they themselves have been incarcerated, tortured, put to death. The agents of etatism have certainly not been lacking in zeal and energy. But, for all this, economic affairs cannot be kept going by magistrates and policemen.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 282

PRIVATE PROPERTY

The program of liberalism, therefore, if condensed into a single word, would have to read: property, that is, private ownership of the means of production. . . . All the other demands of liberalism result from this fundamental demand.

Liberalism, p. 19

The essential teaching of liberalism is that social cooperation and the division of labor can be achieved only in a system of private ownership of the means of production, i.e., within a market society, or capitalism. All the other principles of liberalism—democracy, personal freedom of the individual, freedom of speech and of the press, religious tolerance, peace among the nations—are consequences of this basic postulate. They can be realized only within a society based on private property.

Omnipotent Government, p. 48

Private property creates for the individual a sphere in which he is free of the state. It sets limits to the operation of the authoritarian will. It allows other forces to arise side by side with and in opposition to political power. It thus becomes the basis of all those activities that are free from violent interference on the part of the state. It is the soil in which the seeds of freedom are nurtured and in which the autonomy of the individual and ultimately all intellectual and material progress are rooted.

Liberalism, pp. 67–68

If history could prove and teach us anything, it would be that private ownership of the means of production is a necessary requisite of civilization and material well-being. . . . Only nations committed to the principle of private property have risen above penury and produced science, art and literature.

Planned Chaos, p. 81

It belongs to the very essence of a society based on private ownership of the means of production that every man may work and dispose of his earnings where he thinks best.

Liberalism, p. 137

Under capitalism, private property is the consummation of the self-determination of the consumers.

Human Action, p. 680; p. 683

Social cooperation, however, can be based only on the foundation of private ownership of the means of production.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 39

The continued existence of society depends upon private property, and since men have need of society, they must hold fast to the institution of private property to avoid injuring their own interests as well as the interests of everyone else. For society can continue to exist only on the foundation of private property. Whoever champions the latter champions by the same token the preservation of the social bond that unites mankind, the preservation of culture and civilization. He is an apologist and defender of society, culture, and civilization, and because he desires them as ends, he must also desire and defend the one means that leads to them, namely, private property.

Liberalism, p. 87

Governments tolerate private property when they are compelled to do so, but they do not acknowledge it voluntarily in recognition of its necessity.

Liberalism, p. 68

The “have’s” do not have any more reason to support the institution of private ownership of the means of production than do the “have-not’s.”

Liberalism, p. 186

The truth is that every infringement of property rights and every restriction of free enterprise impairs the productivity of labor.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 484

PRODUCTION

Production is not an end in itself. Its purpose is to serve consumption.

On the Manipulation of Money and Credit, p. 178

The role played by man in production always consists solely in combining his personal forces with the forces of Nature in such a way that the cooperation leads to some particular desired arrangement of material. No human act of production amounts to more than altering the position of things in space and leaving the rest to Nature.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 97

Neither the entrepreneurs nor the farmers nor the capitalists determine what has to be produced. The consumers do that.

Human Action, p. 270; p. 270

The actual world is a world of permanent change. Population figures, tastes, and wants, the supply of factors of production and technological methods are in a ceaseless flux. In such a state of affairs there is need for a continuous adjustment of production to the change in conditions.

Bureaucracy, p. 28

The truth is that the characteristic feature of capitalism was and is mass production for the needs of the masses.

Planning for Freedom, p. 170

It is manifestly contrary to the interest of the consumers to prevent the most efficient entrepreneurs from expanding the sphere of their activities up to the limit to which the public approves of their conduct of business by buying their products.

Human Action, p. 802; p. 806

To drink coffee I do not need to own a coffee plantation in Brazil, an ocean steamer, and a coffee roasting plant, though all these means of production must be used to bring a cup of coffee to my table. Sufficient that others own these means of production and employ them for me.

Socialism, p. 31

Society is best served when the means of production are in the possession of those who know how to use them best.

Socialism, p. 66

Production is not something physical, material, and external; it is a spiritual and intellectual phenomenon.

Human Action, p. 141; p. 144

Its [production’s] essential requisites are not human labor and external natural forces and things, but the decision of the mind to use these factors as means for the attainment of ends. What produces the product are not toil and trouble in themselves, but the fact that the toiling is guided by reason. The human mind alone has the power to remove uneasiness.

Human Action, pp. 141–42; pp. 141–42

PRODUCTIVITY

The increase in what is called the productivity of labor is due to the employment of better tools and machines.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 38

Tools and machinery are primarily not labor-saving devices, but means to increase output per unit of input.

Human Action, p. 768; p. 774

It is an illusion to believe that one can maintain productivity and reduce the division of labor.

Socialism, p. 271

In reviewing the whole history of mankind from the early beginnings of civilization up to our age, it makes sense to establish in general terms the fact that the productivity of human labor has been multiplied, for indeed the members of a civilized nation produce today much more than their ancestors did.

Human Action, No Entry; pp. 607–08

The productivity of social cooperation surpasses in every respect the sum total of the production of isolated individuals.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 43

The concept of productivity is altogether subjective; it can never provide the starting-point for an objective criticism.

Liberalism, p. 65

PROFITEERS

The epithet profiteer is the expression of an arbitrary judgment of value. There is no other standard available for the distinction between profiteering and earning fair profits than that provided by the censor’s personal envy and resentment.

Planning for Freedom, p. 128

PROFIT AND LOSS

Profit is the pay-off of successful action. It cannot be defined without reference to valuation. It is a phenomenon of valuation and has no direct relation to physical and other phenomena of the external world.

Human Action, p. 393; p. 396

Profit is a product of the mind, of success in anticipating the future state of the market. It is a spiritual and intellectual phenomenon.

Planning for Freedom, p. 120

The entrepreneur profits to the extent he has succeeded in serving the consumers better than other people have done.

Human Action, p. 380; p. 383

Profit is the reward for the best fulfillment of some voluntarily assumed duties. It is the instrument that makes the masses supreme.

Bureaucracy, p. 88

Profits and loss withdraw the material factors of production from the hands of the inefficient and convey them into the hands of the more efficient.

Planning for Freedom, p. 16

There would not be any profits but for the eagerness of the public to acquire the merchandise offered for sale by the successful entrepreneur, but the same people who scramble for these articles vilify the businessman and call his profit ill-got.

Planning for Freedom, p. 122

It is precisely the necessity of making profits and avoiding losses that gives to the consumers a firm hold over the entrepreneurs and forces them to comply with the wishes of the people.

Planning for Freedom, p. 134

There is no reason why capitalists and entrepreneurs should be ashamed of earning profits.

Planning for Freedom, p. 146

The elimination of profit, whatever methods may be resorted to for its execution, must transform society into a senseless jumble. It would create poverty for all.

Planning for Freedom, p. 149

Profit tells the entrepreneur that the consumers approve of his ventures; loss, that they disapprove.

Human Action, p. 701; p. 705

Profits are the driving force of the market economy. The greater the profits, the better the needs of the consumers are supplied. For profits can only be reaped by removing discrepancies between the demands of the consumers and the previous state of productions activities. He who serves the public best, makes the highest profits.

Human Action, p. 805; p. 809

It is not the fault of the entrepreneurs that the consumers—the people, the common man—prefer liquor to Bibles and detective stories to serious books, and that governments prefer guns to butter. The entrepreneur does not make greater profits in selling “bad” things than in selling “good” things. His profits are the greater the better he succeeds in providing the consumers with those things they ask for most intensely.

Human Action, p. 297; pp. 299–300

The dividends of corporations are popularly called profits. Actually they are interest on the capital invested plus that part of profits that is not ploughed back into the enterprise. If the enterprise does not operate successfully, either no dividends are paid or the dividends contain only interest on the whole or a part of the capital.

Human Action, No Entry; p. 300

PROGRESS

It is not true that human conditions must always improve, and that a relapse into very unsatisfactory modes of life, penury and barbarism is impossible.

Planning for Freedom, p. 177

There is no evidence that social evolution must move steadily upwards in a straight line. Social standstill and social retrogression are historical facts which we cannot ignore. World history is the graveyard of dead civilizations.

Socialism, p. 275

What is called economic progress is the joint effect of the activities of the three progressive groups . . . the savers, the scientist-inventors, and the entrepreneurs, operating in a market economy.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 127

Whoever preaches the return to simple forms of the economic organization of society ought to keep in mind that only our type of economic system offers the possibility of supporting in the style to which we have become accustomed today the number of people who now populate the earth. A return to the Middle Ages means the extermination of many hundreds of millions of people.

Liberalism, p. 189

It is true that all this straining and struggling to increase their standard of living does not make men any happier. Nevertheless, it is in the nature of man continually to strive for an improvement in his material condition. If he is forbidden the satisfaction of this aspiration, he becomes dull and brutish. The masses will not listen to exhortations to be moderate and contented; it may be that the philosophers who preach such admonitions are laboring under a serious self-delusion. If one tells people that their fathers had it much worse, they answer that they do not know why they should not have it still better.

Liberalism, p. 190

Men always strive for an improvement in their conditions and always will. This is man’s inescapable destiny.

Liberalism, p. 190

PROGRESSIVES

The “progressives” who today masquerade as “liberals” may rant against “fascism”; yet it is their policy that paves the way for Hitlerism.

Interventionism, p. 88

PROHIBITION

Mankind does not drink alcohol because there are breweries, distilleries, and vineyards; men brew beer, distill spirits, and grow grapes because of the demand for alcoholic drinks.

Socialism, p. 403

PROSPERITY

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

Economic Policy, p. 89

Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer.

A Critique of Interventionism, p. 23

The very existence of a comparatively great number of invalids is, however paradoxical, a characteristic mark of civilization and material well-being. Provision for those invalids who lack mean of sustenance and are not taken care of by their next of kin has long been considered a work of charity.

Human Action, p. 833; p. 837

PROSTITUTION

Since its appearance the view that prostitution is a product of capitalism has gained ground enormously. And as, in addition, preachers still complain that the good old morals have decayed, and accuse modern culture of having led to loose living, everyone is convinced that all sexual wrongs represent a symptom of decadence peculiar to our age.

Socialism, p. 92

PROTECTIONISM

A capitalist world organized on liberal principles knows no separate “economic” zones. In such a world, the whole of the earth’s surface forms a single economic territory.

Liberalism, p. 113

Economic nationalism is incompatible with durable peace. Yet economic nationalism is unavoidable where there is government interference with business. Protectionism is indispensable where there is no domestic free trade. Where there is government interference with business, free trade even in the short run would frustrate the aims sought by the various interventionist measures.

Human Action, p. 682; p. 686

The philosophy of protectionism is a philosophy of war. The wars of our age are not at variance with popular economic doctrines; they are, on the contrary, the inescapable result of a consistent application of these doctrines.

Human Action, p. 683; p. 687

Government does not have the power to encourage one branch of production except by curtailing other branches. It withdraws the factors of production from those branches in which the unhampered market would employ them and directs them into other branches.

Human Action, p. 737; p. 744

The slogan “Away with foreign goods!” would lead us, if we accepted all its implications, to abolish the division of labor altogether. For the principle that makes the international division of labor seem advantageous is precisely the principle which recommends division of labor in any circumstances.

Socialism, p. 288

Protectionism and autarky always result in shifting production from the centers where conditions are more favorable—i.e., from where the output for the same amount of physical input is higher—to centers where they are less favorable. The more productive resources remain unused while the less productive are utilized. The effect is a general drop in the productivity of human effort, and thereby a lowering of the standard of living all over the world.

Omnipotent Government, p. 73

People favor discrimination and privileges because they do not realize that they themselves are consumers and as such must foot the bill. In the case of protectionism, for example, they believe that only the foreigners against whom the import duties discriminate are hurt. It is true the foreigners are hurt, but not they alone: the consumers who must pay higher prices suffer with them.

Omnipotent Government, p. 183

In the long run there cannot be such a thing as “moderate” protectionism. If people regard imports as an injury, they will not stop anywhere on the way toward autarky. Why tolerate an evil if there seems to be a way to get rid of it?

Omnipotent Government, p. 250

From the purely economic point of view nothing speaks against free trade and everything against protectionism.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 64

Hunger and anarchy—that is the result of the protectionist policy.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 75

Every restriction of trade creates vested interests that are from then onward opposed to its removal.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 288

PUBLIC DEBT

He who invested his funds in bonds issued by the government and its subdivisions was no longer subject to the inescapable laws of the market and to the sovereignty of the consumers. He was no longer under the necessity of investing his funds in such a way that they would best serve the wants and needs of the consumers.

Human Action, p. 226; p. 225

Income no longer stemmed from the process of supplying the wants of the consumers in the best possible way, but from the taxes levied by the state’s apparatus of compulsion and coercion. He was no longer a servant of his fellow citizens, subject to their sovereignty; he was a partner of the government which ruled the people and exacted tribute from them.

Human Action, p. 226; p. 225

The public debt embodies claims of people who have in the past entrusted funds to the government against all those who are daily producing new wealth. It burdens the producing strata for the benefit of another part of the people.

Human Action, p. 229n; p. 228n

The most popular of these doctrines is crystallized in the phrase: A public debt is no burden because we owe it to ourselves. If this were true, then the wholesale obliteration of the public debt would be an innocuous operation, a mere act of bookkeeping and accountancy.

Human Action, p. 229n; p. 228n

Policies of long-term irredeemable and perpetual loans . . . offered to the citizen an opportunity to put his wealth in safety and to enjoy a stable income secure against all vicissitudes. It opened a way to free the individual from the necessity of risking and acquiring his wealth and his income anew each day in the capitalist market.

Human Action, p. 226; p. 225

The financial history of the last century shows a steady increase in the amount of public indebtedness. Nobody believes that the states will eternally drag the burden of these interest payments. It is obvious that sooner or later all these debts will be liquidated in some way or other, but certainly not by payment of interest and principal according to the terms of the contract.

Human Action, p. 228; p. 227

PUBLIC OPINION

No ruler who lacks the gift of persuasion can stay in office long; it is the indispensable condition of government. It would be an idle illusion to assume that any government, no matter how good, could lastingly do without public consent.

Omnipotent Government, p. 119

The flowering of human society depends on two factors: the intellectual power of outstanding men to conceive sound social and economic theories, and the ability of these or other men to make these ideologies palatable to the majority.

Human Action, p. 860; p. 864

In the long run no government can maintain itself in power if it does not have public opinion behind it, i.e., if those governed are not convinced that the government is good.

Liberalism, p. 41

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

Only a group that can count on the consent of the governed can establish a lasting regime. Whoever wants to see the world governed according to his own ideas must strive for domination over men’s minds. It is impossible, in the long run, to subject men against their will to a regime that they reject.

Liberalism, p. 46

The minority that desires to see its ideas triumph must strive by intellectual means to become the majority.

Liberalism, p. 59

If public opinion is ultimately responsible for the structure of government, it is also the agency that determines whether there is freedom or bondage. There is virtually only one factor that has the power to make people unfree—tyrannical public opinion. The struggle for freedom is ultimately not resistance to autocrats or oligarchs but resistance to the despotism of public opinion.

Theory and History, pp. 66–67

The truth is that most people lack the intellectual ability and courage to resist a popular movement, however pernicious and ill-considered.

Planned Chaos, p. 88

The masses favor socialism because they trust the socialist propaganda of the intellectuals. The intellectuals, not the populace, are molding public opinion.

Planned Chaos, p. 90

Governments cannot free themselves from the pressure of public opinion. They cannot rebel against the preponderance of generally accepted ideologies, however fallacious. But this does not excuse the officeholders who could resign rather than carry out policies disastrous for the country.

Human Action, p. 787; p. 793

In the long run there cannot be any such thing as an unpopular system of government.

Human Action, p. 859; p. 863

The supremacy of public opinion determines not only the singular role that economics occupies in the complex of thought and knowledge. It determines the whole process of human history.

Human Action, p. 859; p. 863

The masses, the hosts of common men, do not conceive any ideas, sound or unsound. They only choose between the ideologies developed by the intellectual leaders of mankind. But their choice is final and determines the course of events. If they prefer bad doctrines, nothing can prevent disaster.

Human Action, p. 860; p. 864

PUNISHMENT

Punishment should not be vindictive or retaliatory. The criminal has incurred the penalties of the law, but not the hate and sadism of the judge, the policemen, and every lynch-thirsty mob.

Liberalism, p. 58

PURCHASING POWER

The money prices of today are linked with those of yesterday and before, and with those of tomorrow and after.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 130

An increase in the purchasing power of money is disadvantageous to the debtor and advantageous to the creditor; a decrease in its purchasing power has the contrary significance.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 229

RACES

Nation and race do not coincide; there is no nation of pure blood. All peoples have arisen from a mixture of races.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 10

The beginnings of trade make understanding necessary between members of different tribes.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 21

If one does not wish to aggravate artificially the friction that must arise from this living together of different groups, one must restrict the state to just those tasks that it alone can perform.

Liberalism, pp. 117–18

Let us not forget that the actual menace to our civilization does not originate from a conflict between the white and colored races but from conflict among the various peoples of Europe and of European ancestry.

Omnipotent Government, p. 107

The fundamental discrepancies in worldview and patterns of behavior do not correspond to differences in race, nationality or class affiliation. There is hardly any greater divergence in value judgments than that between ascetics and those eager to enjoy life lightheartedly.

Human Action, p. 87; p. 87

It is neither “natural” nor “necessary” that the members of the same race or the inhabitants of the same country cooperate with one another more closely than with members of other races or inhabitants of other countries. The ideas of race solidarity and racial hatred are no less ideas than any other ideas, and only where they are accepted by the individuals do they result in corresponding action.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 81

RAILROADS

In the United States the competition to the railroads—in the form of busses, automobiles, trucks, and airplanes—has caused the railroads to suffer and to be almost completely defeated, as far as passenger transportation is concerned.

Economic Policy, p. 5

RATIONAL ACTION

The fundamental thesis of rationalism is unassailable. Man is a rational being; that is, his actions are guided by reason.

Theory and History, p. 269

Rational and irrational always mean: reasonable or not from the point of view of the ends sought. There is no such thing as absolute rationality or irrationality.

Omnipotent Government, p. 113

The assertion that there is irrational action is always rooted in an evaluation of a scale of values different from our own. Whoever says that irrationality plays a role in human action is merely saying that his fellow men behave in a way that he does not consider correct.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 33

Rational conduct means that man, in face of the fact that he cannot satisfy all his impulses, desires, and appetites, forgoes the satisfaction of those which he considers less urgent.

Human Action, pp. 171–72; p. 172

Action is, by definition, always rational. One is unwarranted in calling goals of action irrational simply because they are not worth striving for from the point of view of one’s own valuations.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 35

REALITY

Life consists in adjusting oneself to actual conditions and in taking account of things as they really are, not as one would wish them to be.

Omnipotent Government, p. 13

Every enterprise has to adapt itself to the given situation, and not reckon on the situation it would like to be given.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 229

One of the fundamental facts of all social life, which all reformers must take into account, is that men have their own thoughts and their own wills.

Socialism, p. 183

The cognizance of reality is a sad experience. It teaches the limits on the satisfaction of one’s wishes. Only reluctantly does man resign himself to the insight that there are things, viz., the whole complex of all causal relations between events, which wishful thinking cannot alter.

Human Action, p. 858; p. 862

We must see conditions as they really are, not as we want them to be.

Omnipotent Government, p. 259

Most men endure the sacrifice of the intellect more easily than the sacrifice of their daydreams. They cannot bear that their utopias should run aground on the unalterable necessities of human existence. What they yearn for is another reality different from the one given in this world. . . . They wish to be free of a universe of whose order they do not approve.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 200

REASON

Life and reality are neither logical nor illogical; they are simply given.

Austrian Economics: An Anthology, p. 156

Man has only one tool to fight error: reason.

Human Action, p. 187; p. 187

Logic is consistent in every science.

A Critique of Interventionism, p. 86

The only statement that can be predicated with regard to reason is that it is the mark that distinguishes man from animals and has brought about everything that is specifically human.

Human Action, p. 91; p. 91

Abstract thought is independent of the wishes which move the thinker and of the aims for which he strives.

Socialism, p. 317

The wish is father to the thought, says a figure of speech. What it means is that the wish is the father of faith.

Socialism, p. 317n

It is vain to object that life and reality are not logical. Life and reality are neither logical nor illogical; they are simply given. But logic is the only tool available to man for the comprehension of both.

Human Action, pp. 67–68; p. 67

Man uses reason in order to choose between the incompatible satisfactions of conflicting desires.

Human Action, p. 173; p. 174

Reason is man’s particular and characteristic feature. There is no need for praxeology to raise the question whether reason is a suitable tool for the cognition of ultimate and absolute truth. It deals with reason only as far as it enables man to act.

Human Action, p. 177; p. 177

Logical thinking and real life are not two separate orbits. Logic is for man the only means to master the problems of reality.

Human Action, p. 185; p. 185

The proof of a theory is in its reasoning, not in its sponsorship.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 99

Not everything that exists today is reasonable; but this does not mean that everything that does not exist is sensible.

Interventionism, p. 89

What mankind needs today is liberation from the rule of nonsensical slogans and a return to sound reasoning.

Interventionism, p. 90

Reason is the main resource of man in his struggle for survival.

Omnipotent Government, p. 121

The Enlightenment did not put its hopes upon the more or less accidental emergence of well-intentioned rulers and provident sages. Its optimism concerning mankind’s future was founded upon the double faith in the goodness of man and in his rational mind.

The Historical Setting of the Austrian School, p. 34

Reason is man’s foremost equipment in the biological struggle for the preservation and expansion of his existence and survival. It would not have any function and would not have developed at all in the fool’s paradise.

Money, Method, and the Market Process, p. 35

RECOVERY

Every country can experience the same “miracle” of economic recovery, although I must insist that economic recovery does not come from a miracle; it comes from the adoption of—and is the result of—sound economic policies.

Economic Policy, p. 15

REGRET

Nothing is more useless than complaining over errors that can no longer be rectified, nothing more vain than regret.

Nation, State, and Economy,

REGULARITY

If there were no regularity, nothing could be learned from experience.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 21

It would be vain to search for a rule if there were no regularity.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 22

In the etatist state entrepreneurs are at the mercy of officialdom. Officials enjoy discretion to decide questions on which the existence of every firm depends. They are practically free to ruin any entrepreneur they want to. They had the power not only to silence these objectors but even to force them to contribute to the party funds of nationalism.

Omnipotent Government, p. 132

RELIGION

To the believer, religion brings consolation and courage; it enables him to see himself as a thread in the fabric of eternal life, it assigns to him a place in the imperishable plan of a world creator, and places him beyond time and space, old age and death, high in the celestial pastures.

Socialism, p. 84

Although some intolerance, bigotry, and lust for persecution is still left in religious matters, it is unlikely that religious passion will kindle wars in the near future. The aggressive spirit of our age stems from another source, from endeavors to make the state totalitarian and to deprive the individual of autonomy.

Theory and History, p. 64

It is justifiable if ethics and religion tell people that they ought to make better use of the well-being that capitalism brings them. . . . But it is irresponsible to condemn one social system and to recommend its replacement by another system without having fully investigated the economic consequences of each.

Theory and History, p. 343

The churches are right to lament the destitution of the masses in the economically backward countries. But they are badly mistaken when they assume that anything can wipe out the poverty of these wretched people but unconditional adoption of the system of profit-seeking big business, that is, mass production for the satisfaction of the needs of the many.

Theory and History, pp. 343–44

Metaphysics and theology are not, as the positivists pretend, products of an activity unworthy of Homo sapiens, remnants of mankind’s primitive age that civilized people ought to discard. They are a manifestation of man’s unappeasable craving for knowledge.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 120

Liberalism limits its concern entirely and exclusively to earthly ife and earthly endeavor. The kingdom of religion, on the other hand, is not of this world. Thus, liberalism and religion could both exist side by side without their spheres’ touching. . . . Liberalism proclaims tolerance for every religious faith and every metaphysical belief, not out of indifference for these “higher” things, but from the conviction that the assurance of peace within society must take precedence over everything and everyone.

Liberalism, pp. 55–56

It is true that utilitarianism and liberalism postulate the attainment of the greatest possible productivity of labor as the first and most important goal of policy. But they in no way do this out of misunderstanding of the fact that human existence does not exhaust itself in material pleasures. . . . Not out of irreligiosity do they demand religious freedom but out of deepest intimacy of religious feeling, which wants to make inner experience free from every raw influence of outward power.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 215

RETREATISM

It is a sickly weakness of nerves that urges one to seek harmonious personality growth in past ages and remote places.

A Critique of Interventionism, p. 130

There are, after all, not many people who are prepared to renounce light-heartedly the fruits of culture, however much they may despise them in thought and abuse them in words, few who are willing to return without more ado to the way of life of the deer and the stag.

Socialism, p. 365

If the diligence of modern industry were replaced by the contemplative life of the past, unnumbered millions would be doomed to death by starvation.

Socialism, p. 396

REVOLUTION

The citizen must not be so narrowly circumscribed in his activities that, if he thinks differently from those in power, his only choice is either to perish or to destroy the machinery of state.

Liberalism, p. 59

No physical violence and compulsion can possibly force a man against his will to remain in the status of the ward of a hegemonic order. What violence or the threat of violence brings about is a state of affairs in which subjection as a rule is considered more desirable than rebellion. Faced with the choice between the consequences of obedience and of disobedience, the ward prefers the former and thus integrates himself into the hegemonic bond. Every new command places this choice before him again. In yielding again and again he himself contributes his share to the continuous existence of the hegemonic societal body.

Human Action, p. 197; p. 196

The majority has the power to do away with an unpopular government and uses this power whenever it becomes convinced that its own welfare requires it. In the long run there is no such thing as an unpopular government. Civil war and revolution are the means by which the discontented majorities overthrow rulers and methods of government which do not suit them.

Human Action, pp. 149–150; pp. 149–150

Though a tyrant may temporarily rule through a minority if this minority is armed and the majority is not, in the long run a minority cannot keep the majority in subservience. The oppressed will rise in rebellion and cast off the yoke of tyranny.

Human Action, p. 189; p. 189

Violent resistance against the power of the state is the last resort of the minority in its effort to break loose from the oppression of the majority. The minority that desires to see its ideas triumph must strive by intellectual means to become the majority.

Liberalism, p. 59

RICH AND POOR

The private life of a modern entrepreneur or executive differs much less from that of his employees than, centuries ago, the life of a feudal landlord differed from that of his serfs.

Omnipotent Government, p. 117

It may indeed be true that the liberal economic order permits great differences in income, but that in no way involves exploitation of the poor by richer people. What the rich have they have not taken away from the poor; their surplus could not be more or less redistributed to the poor in the socialist society, since in that society it would not be produced at all.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 184

It is untrue that some are poor because others are rich. If an order of society in which incomes were equal replaced the capitalist order, everyone would become poorer.

Socialism, p. 394

RISK

All economic activity is based upon an uncertain future. It is therefore bound up with risk. It is essentially speculation.

Socialism, p. 181

There is no such thing as a safe investment. If capitalists were to behave in the way the risk fable describes and were to strive after what they consider to be the safest investment, their conduct would render this line of investment unsafe and they would certainly lose their input. For the capitalist there is no means of evading the law of the market that makes it imperative for the investor to comply with the wishes of the consumers and to produce all that can be produced under the given state of capital supply, technological knowledge, and the valuations of the consumers.

Human Action, p. 806; p. 810

There is no such thing as independence of the vicissitudes of the market.

Human Action, p. 806; p. 810

The fact that a capitalist as a rule does not concentrate his investments, both in common stock and in loans, in one enterprise or one branch of business, but prefers to spread out his funds among various classes of investment, does not suggest that he wants to reduce his “gambling risk.” He wants to improve his chances of earning profits.

Human Action, p. 806; p. 810

Estimates of future volume of production, future sales, future costs, or future profits or losses are not facts, but speculative anticipations. There are no facts about future profits.

Human Action, p. 812; p. 816

ROBINSON, JOAN

Once the socialist regime is “sufficiently secure to risk criticism,” Miss Joan Robinson, the eminent representative of the British neo-Cambridge school, is kind enough to promise us, “even independent philharmonic societies” will be allowed to exist. Thus the liquidation of all dissenters is the condition that will bring us what the communists call freedom.

Liberty and Property, p. 15

ROMAN EMPIRE

The Roman Empire crumbled to dust because it lacked the spirit of liberalism and free enterprise. The policy of interventionism and its political corollary, the Führer principle, decomposed the mighty empire as they will by necessity always disintegrate and destroy any social entity.

Human Action, p. 763; p. 769

ROMANTICISM

Romanticism is man’s revolt against reason, as well as against the condition under which nature has compelled him to live. The romantic is a daydreamer; he easily manages in imagination to disregard the laws of logic and of nature. . . . He has a grudge against reality because it is not like the dream world he has created. He hates work, economy, and reason.

Socialism, p. 419

It was writers of this class who introduced as literary figures the bloodsucking capitalist entrepreneur and the noble proletarian. To them the rich man is in the wrong because he is rich, and the poor in the right because he is poor.

Socialism, p. 420

The romantic longing for wild adventures, for quarreling and freedom from external restraint, is itself only a sign of inner emptiness; it clings to the superficial and does not strive for depth.

Nation, State, and Economy, pp. 212–13

The romantic revolt against logic and science does not limit itself to the sphere of social phenomena. . . . It is a revolt against our entire culture and civilization.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 200

ROTHBARD, MURRAY

Dr. Rothbard is already well known as the author of several excellent monographs. Now, as the result of many years of sagacious and discerning meditation, he joins the ranks of eminent economists by publishing a voluminous work, a systematic treatise on economics.

Economic Freedom and Interventionism, p. 155

Now such a book as Man, Economy, and State offers to every intelligent man an opportunity to obtain reliable information concerning the great controversies and conflicts of our age. It is certainly not easy reading and asks for the utmost exertion of one’s attention. But there are no shortcuts to wisdom.

Economic Freedom and Interventionism, p. 158

RULE OF LAW

The State is the only institution entitled to apply coercion and compulsion and to inflict harm upon individuals. This tremendous power cannot be abandoned to the discretion of some men, however competent and clever they may deem themselves. It is necessary to restrict its application. This is the task of the laws.

Bureaucracy, p. 76

The alternative to the rule of law is the rule of despots.

Bureaucracy, p. 76

It is the social function of the laws to curb the arbitrariness of the police. The rule of law restricts the arbitrariness of the officers as much as possible. It strictly limits their discretion and thus assigns to the citizens a sphere in which they are free to act without being frustrated by government interference.

Planned Chaos, pp. 63–64

It is the rule of law alone which hinders the rulers from turning themselves into the worst gangsters.

Planned Chaos, p. 64

Classical liberalism regarded those laws best that afforded the least discretionary power to executive authorities, thus avoiding arbitrariness and abuse. The modern state seeks to expand its discretionary power—everything is to be left to the discretion of officials.

A Critique of Interventionism, pp. 31–32

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

RUSSIA

Not the Russian armies, but the communist ideologies threaten the West.

Planned Chaos, p. 50

The Russian pattern of socialism is purely bureaucratic. All economic enterprises are departments of the government, like the administration of the army or the postal system. Every plant, shop, or farm stands in the same relation to the superior central organization as does a post office to the office of the postmaster general.

Omnipotent Government, p. 56

In Russia socialism certainly is not a movement of the immense majority. That it claims to be a movement in the interest of the immense majority is nothing special; all movements have claimed that. It is certain that the rule of the Bolsheviks in Russia rests just as much on possession of the government apparatus as the rule of the Romanovs once did.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 204

Whether or not the Russian people are to discard the Soviet system is for them to settle among themselves. The land of the knout and the prison-camp no longer poses a threat to the world today. With all their will to war and destruction, the Russians are no longer capable seriously of imperiling the peace of Europe. One may therefore safely let them alone. The only thing that needs to be resisted is any tendency on our part to support or promote the destructionist policy of the Soviets.

Liberalism, p. 154

This is not to say, either, that Americans or Europeans ought to be prevented from visiting Russia if they are attracted to it. Let them view at first hand, at their own risk and on their own responsibility, the land of mass murder and mass misery. Nor does this mean that capitalists ought to be prevented from granting loans to the Soviets or otherwise to invest capital in Russia. If they are foolish enough to believe that they will ever see any part of it again, let them make the venture.

Liberalism, p. 153

RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

The real significance of the Lenin revolution is to be seen in the fact that it was the bursting forth of the principle of unrestricted violence and oppression. It was the negation of all the political ideals that had for three thousand years guided the evolution of Western civilization.

Planned Chaos, p. 63

SANCTIONS

There can be neither effective political cooperation nor solidarity and collective security among nations fighting each other in the economic sphere.

Omnipotent Government, p. 265

SAVINGS

The only source of the generation of additional capital goods is saving. If all the goods produced are consumed, no new capital comes into being.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 84

Capital is not a free gift of God or of nature. It is the outcome of a provident restriction of consumption on the part of man. It is created and increased by saving and maintained by the abstention from dissaving.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 84

At the outset of every step forward on the road to a more plentiful existence is saving—the provisionment of products that makes it possible to prolong the average period of time elapsing between the beginning of the production process and its turning out of a product ready for use and consumption. . . . Without saving and capital accumulation there could not be any striving toward nonmaterial ends.

Human Action, No Entry; p. 260

The most ingenious technological inventions would be practically useless if the capital goods required for their utilization had not been accumulated by saving.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 39

We are the lucky heirs of our fathers and forefathers whose saving has accumulated the capital goods with the aid of which we are working today. We favorite children of the age of electricity still derive advantage from the original saving of the primitive fishermen who, in producing the first nets and canoes, devoted a part of their working time to provision for a remoter future.

Human Action, p. 489; p. 492

SAY’S LAW

With regard to economic goods there can never be absolute overproduction.

Planning for Freedom, p. 65

With regard to economic goods there can be only relative overproduction. . . . The attempts to explain the general depression of trade by referring to an allegedly general overproduction are therefore fallacious.

Planning for Freedom, p. 65

Say emerged victoriously from his polemics with Malthus and Sismondi. He proved his case, while adversaries could not prove theirs. Henceforth, during the whole rest of the nineteenth century, the acknowledgement of the truth contained in Say’s Law was the distinctive mark of an economist.

Planning for Freedom, p. 67

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

SCARCITY

The available supply of every commodity is limited. If it were not scarce with regard to the demand of the public, the thing in question would not be considered an economic good, and no price would be paid for it.

Human Action, p. 356; p. 359

SCHILLER, FREDERICK

The poems, plays, and other writings of Frederick Schiller are from beginning to end a hymn to liberty. Every word written by Schiller was a blow to the old political system of Germany; his works were fervently greeted by nearly all Germans who read books or frequented the theater.

Omnipotent Government, p. 19

SCIENCE

Science is competent to establish what is. It can never dictate what ought to be.

Planned Chaos, p. 30

There are no laboratory experiments in human action.

Economic Policy, p. 35

Science does not give us absolute and final certainty. It only gives us assurance within the limits of our mental abilities and the prevailing state of scientific thought. A scientific system is but one station in an endlessly progressing search for knowledge. It is necessarily affected by the insufficiency inherent in every human effort. But to acknowledge these facts does not mean that present-day economics is backward. It merely means that economics is a living thing—and to live implies both imperfection and change.

Human Action, p. 7; p. 7

What matters is not whether a doctrine is new, but whether it is sound.

Planning for Freedom, p. 53

No science can avoid abstract concepts, and he who abhors them should stay away from science and see whether and how he can go through life without them.

A Critique of Interventionism, p. 89

There are fads and fashions in the treatment of scientific problems and in the terminology of the scientific language.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 69

What life and death are eludes its grasp.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 44

One has to recognize that science is not metaphysics, and certainly not mysticism; it can never bring us the illumination and the satisfaction experienced by one enraptured in ecstasy. Science is sobriety and clarity of conception, not intoxicated vision.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 46

Whether we see the greatest value in wisdom or in action, in neither case may we scorn science. It alone shows us the way both to knowledge and to action. Without it our existence would be only vegetative.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 46

Science is universally human, and not limited by nationality, bound to a particular time, or contingent upon any social class.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 152

Science cannot go beyond its own sphere. It must limit itself to the development of our system of knowledge and with its help undertake the logical elaboration of experience.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 201

SECESSION

A nation, therefore, has no right to say to a province: You belong to me, I want to take you. A province consists of its inhabitants. If anybody has a right to be heard in this case it is these inhabitants. Boundary disputes should be settled by plebiscite.

Omnipotent Government, p. 90

To the princely principle of subjecting just as much land as obtainable to one’s own rule, the doctrine of freedom opposes the principle of the right of self-determination of peoples, which follows necessarily from the principle of the rights of man. No people and no part of a people shall be held against its will in a political association that it does not want.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 34

Liberalism knows no conquests, no annexations; just as it is indifferent towards the state itself, so the problem of the size of the state is unimportant to it. It forces no one against his will into the structure of the state. Whoever wants to emigrate is not held back. When a part of the people of the state wants to drop out of the union, liberalism does not hinder it from doing so. Colonies that want to become independent need only do so. The nation as an organic entity can be neither increased nor reduced by changes in states; the world as a whole can neither win nor lose from them.

Nation, State, and Economy, pp. 39–40

The size of a state’s territory therefore does not matter.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 82

The right of self-determination in regard to the question of membership in a state thus means: whenever the inhabitants of a particular territory, whether it be a single village, a whole district, or a series of adjacent districts, make it known, by a freely conducted plebiscite, that they no longer wish to remain united to the state to which they belong at the time, but wish either to form an independent state or to attach themselves to some other state, their wishes are to be respected and complied with. This is the only feasible and effective way of preventing revolutions and civil and international wars.

Liberalism, p. 109

If it were in any way possible to grant this right of self-determination to every individual person, it would have to be done.

Liberalism, pp. 109–10

The situation of having to belong to a state to which one does not wish to belong is no less onerous if it is the result of an election than if one must endure it as the consequence of a military conquest.

Liberalism, p. 119

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 a 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 wanted to belong.

Omnipotent Government, p. 92

SECURITY

There are in this world no such things as stability and security and no human endeavors are powerful enough to bring them about. There is in the social system of the market society no other means of acquiring wealth and of preserving it than successful service to the consumers.

Human Action, p. 227; p. 226

SELF-INTEREST

The member of a contractual society is free because he serves others only in serving himself. What restrains him is only the inevitable natural phenomenon of scarcity.

Human Action, p. 280; p. 283

With all the regard due to the sublime self-effacement of saints, we cannot help stating the fact that the world would be in a rather desolate condition if it were peopled exclusively by men not interested in the pursuit of material well-being.

Planning for Freedom, p. 146

Under such a socialist mode of production all personal incentives which selfishness provides under capitalism are removed, and a premium is put upon laziness and negligence. Whereas in a capitalist society selfishness incites everyone to the utmost diligence, in a socialist society it makes for inertia and laxity.

Human Action, p. 674; p. 677

Only those on the government’s payroll are rated as unselfish and noble.

Human Action, No Entry; p. 735

In the society based on division of labour and co-operation, the interests of all members are in harmony, and it follows from this basic fact of social life that ultimately action in the interests of myself and action in the interest of others do not conflict, since the interests of individuals come together in the end.

Socialism, p. 357

That everyone lives and wishes to live primarily for himself does not disturb social life but promotes it, for the higher fulfillment of the individual’s life is possible only in and through society.

Socialism, p. 361

In social cooperation everyone in serving his own interests serves the interests of his fellow men. Driven by the urge to improve his own conditions, he improves the conditions of other people. The baker does not hurt those for whom he bakes bread; he serves them.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 88

SEX

If we do not wish to see life become extinct we should not call the source from which it is renewed a sink of vice.

Socialism, p. 88

Few men know how to be temperate in their sexual life, and it seems especially difficult for aging persons to understand that they should cease entirely to indulge in such pleasures or, at least, do so in moderation.

Liberalism, p. 53

SLAVERY

This is the difference between slavery and freedom. The slave must do what his superior orders him to do, but the free citizen—and this is what freedom means—is in a position to choose his own way of life.

Economic Policy, p. 23

Servile labor disappeared because it could not stand the competition of free labor; its unprofitability sealed its doom in the market economy.

Human Action, p. 625; p. 630

At no time and at no place was it possible for enterprises employing servile labor to compete on the market with enterprises employing free labor. Servile labor could always be utilized only where it did not have to meet the competition of free labor.

Human Action, p. 626; p. 630

When treated as a chattel, man renders a smaller yield per unit of cost expended for current sustenance and guarding than domestic animals.

Human Action, p. 626; pp. 630–31

Slavery did not prepare the way for division of labor. On the contrary it blocked the way. Indeed modern industrial society, with its highly developed division of labor, could not begin to grow until slavery had been abolished.

Socialism, p. 297

Private ownership in the means of production is the only necessary condition for the extensive development of the division of labor. The enslavement of the worker was not necessary to create it.

Socialism, p. 297

Everyone who preaches the right of the stronger considers himself as the stronger. He who espouses the institution of slavery never stops to reflect that he himself could be a slave.

Liberalism, p. 64

SMITH, ADAM

Smith did not inaugurate a new chapter in social philosophy and did not sow on land hitherto left uncultivated.

Economic Freedom and Interventionism, p. 115

Nobody should believe that he will find in Smith’s Wealth of Nations information about present-day economics or about present-day problems of economic policy. Reading Smith is no more a substitute for studying economics than reading Euclid is a substitute for the study of mathematics.

Economic Freedom and Interventionism, p. 117

SOCIAL COOPERATION

What alone enables mankind to advance and distinguishes man from the animals is social cooperation.

Liberalism, p. 24

SOCIAL MOBILITY

To assign to everybody his proper place in society is the task of the consumers. Their buying and abstention from buying is instrumental in determining each individual’s social position.

Human Action, p. 275; p. 275

Modern man has always before his eyes the possibility of growing rich by work and enterprise. In the more rigid economy of the past this was less easy. People were rich or poor from birth, and remained so through their lives unless they were given a change of position through some unforeseen accident, which their own work or enterprise could not have caused or avoided. Accordingly, we had the rich walking on the heights and the poor who stayed in the depths. It is not so in capitalistic society. The rich can more easily become poor and the poor can more easily become rich. And because every individual is not born with, as it were, his own or his family fate sealed, he tries to rise as high as he can.

Socialism, p. 395

SOCIAL PLANNING

The planner is a potential dictator who wants to deprive all other people of the power to plan and act according to their own plans. He aims at one thing only: the exclusive absolute preeminence of his own plan.

Planned Chaos, p. 29

It is a fact that men disagree in their value judgments. It is insolent to arrogate to oneself the right to overrule the plans of other people and to force them to submit to the plan of the planner.

Planned Chaos, p. 30

At the bottom of all this fanatical advocacy of planning and socialism there is often nothing else than the intimate consciousness of one’s own inferiority and inefficiency.

Bureaucracy, p. 92

All this passionate praise of the supereminence of government action is but a poor disguise for the individual interventionist’s self-deification. The great god State is a great god only because it is expected to do exclusively what the individual advocate of interventionism wants to see achieved.

Human Action, p. 727; pp. 731–32

The writings of the socialists are full of such utopian fancies. Whether they call themselves Marxian or non-Marxian socialists, technocrats, or simply planners, they are all eager to show how foolishly things are arranged in reality and how happily men could live if they were to invest the reformers with dictatorial powers. It is, they say, only the inadequacy of a capitalist mode of production that prevents mankind from enjoying all the amenities which could be produced under the contemporary state of technological knowledge.

Human Action, p. 503; pp. 506–07

The eyes with which we look at the matter must not be those of the dreamer envisioning a lost paradise, who sees the future in a blaze of rose-colored light, and condemns all that goes on around us.

Socialism, p. 92

If a man says socialism, or planning, he always has in view his own brand of socialism, his own plan. Thus planning does not in fact mean preparedness to cooperate peacefully. It means conflict.

Omnipotent Government, p. 243

The “social engineer” is the reformer who is prepared to “liquidate” all those who do not fit into his plan for the arrangement of human affairs.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 94

SOCIAL SECURITY

Ultimately the granting of pensions amounts to a restriction of the wage earner’s freedom to use his total income according to his own designs.

Planning for Freedom, p. 86

A man who is forced to provide of his own account for his old age must save a part of his income or take out an insurance policy. This leads him to examine the financial status of the savings bank or the insurance company or the soundness of the bonds he buys. Such a man is more likely to get an idea of the economic problems of his country than a man whom a pension scheme seemingly relieves of all worries.

Planning for Freedom, p. 92

It imposes upon the wage earners a restriction concerning the spending of their total income. It curtails the worker’s freedom to arrange his household according to his own decisions. Whether such a system of social security is a good or a bad policy is essentially a political problem. One may try to justify it by declaring that the wage earners lack the insight and the moral strength to provide spontaneously for their own future. But then it is not easy to silence the voices of those who ask whether it is not paradoxical to entrust the nation’s welfare to the decisions of voters whom the law itself considers incapable of managing their own affairs; whether it is not absurd to make those people supreme in the conduct of government who are manifestly in need of a guardian to prevent them from spending their own income foolishly.

Human Action, p. 613; p. 617

It is no accident that Germany, the country that inaugurated the social security system, was the cradle of both varieties of modern disparagement of democracy, the Marxian as well as the non-Marxian.

Human Action, p. 613; p. 617

By weakening or completely destroying the will to be well and able to work, social insurance creates illness and inability to work; it produces the habit of complaining—which is in itself a neurosis—and neuroses of other kinds. In short, it is an institution which tends to encourage disease, not to say accidents, and to intensify considerably the physical and psychic results of accidents and illnesses. As a social institution it makes a people sick bodily and mentally or at least helps to multiply, lengthen, and intensify disease.

Socialism, p. 432

SOCIALISM

There are many socialists who have never come to grips in any way with the problems of economics, and who have made no attempt at all to form for themselves any clear conception of the conditions which determine the character of human society.

Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth, p. 1

One may anticipate the nature of the future socialist society. There will be hundreds and thousands of factories in operation. Very few of these will be producing wares ready for use; in the majority of cases what will be manufactured will be unfinished goods and production goods. All these concerns will be interrelated. Every good will go through a whole series of stages before it is ready for use. In the ceaseless toil and moil of this process, however, the administration will be without any means of testing their bearings. It will never be able to determine whether a given good has not been kept for a superfluous length of time in the necessary processes of production, or whether work and material have not been wasted in its completion. How will it be able to decide whether this or that method of production is the more profitable? At best it will only be able to compare the quality and quantity of the consumable end product produced, but will in the rarest cases be in a position to compare the expenses entailed in production. It will know, or think it knows, the ends to be achieved by economic organization, and will have to regulate its activities accordingly, i.e. it will have to attain those ends with the least expense. It will have to make its computations with a view to finding the cheapest way. This computation will naturally have to be a value computation. It is eminently clear, and requires no further proof, that it cannot be of a technical character, and that it cannot be based upon the objective use value of goods and services.

Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth, pp. 22–23

In the socialist commonwealth every economic change becomes an undertaking whose success can be neither appraised in advance nor later retrospectively determined. There is only groping in the dark. Socialism is the abolition of rational economy.

Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth, p. 26

The Kingdom of Christ is not of this world; socialism, on the contrary, wants to establish the kingdom of salvation on earth. Therein lies its strength, therein, however, its weakness too, from which it will collapse some day just as quickly as it has triumphed.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 208

Under socialism production is entirely directed by the orders of the central board of production management. The whole nation is an “industrial army” . . . and each citizen is bound to obey his superior’s orders.

Planning for Freedom, p. 72

In the bureaucratic machine of socialism the way toward promotion is not achievement but the favor of the superiors.

Bureaucracy, p. 100

Socialism and democracy are irreconcilable.

A Critique of Interventionism, p. 79

The critics of the capitalistic order always seem to believe that the socialistic system of their dreams will do precisely what they think correct.

A Critique of Interventionism, pp. 156–57

A man who chooses between drinking a glass of milk and a glass of a solution of potassium cyanide does not choose between two beverages; he chooses between life and death. 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

Every socialist is a disguised dictator.

Human Action, p. 689; p. 693

People frequently call socialism a religion. It is indeed the religion of self-deification.

Human Action, p. 689; p. 693

Economics deals merely with the socialist plans, not with the psychological factors that impel people to espouse the religion of statolatry.

Human Action, p. 689; p. 693

Men must choose between the market economy and socialism. They cannot evade deciding between these alternatives by adopting a “middle-of-the-road” position, whatever name they may give to it.

Human Action, p. 857; p. 861

In abolishing economic calculation the general adoption of socialism would result in complete chaos and the disintegration of social cooperation under the division of labor.

Human Action, p. 857; p. 861

Socialism promises not only welfare—wealth for all—but universal happiness in love as well. This part of its program has been the source of much of its popularity.

Socialism, p. 74

Socialism is the renunciation of rational economy.

Socialism, p. 105

Everything brought forward in favor of Socialism during the last hundred years, in thousands of writings and speeches, all the blood which has been spilt by the supporters of Socialism, cannot make socialism workable.

Socialism, p. 117

The attempt to reform the world socialistically might destroy civilization. It would never set up a successful socialist community.

Socialism, p. 118

Socialist society is a society of officials. The way of living prevailing in it, and the mode of thinking of its members, are determined by this fact.

Socialism, p. 165

Socialism knows no freedom of choice in occupation. Everyone has to do what he is told to do and to go where he is sent.

Socialism, p. 165

Those who do not please the holders of power are not allowed to paint or to sculpt or to conduct an orchestra. Their works are not printed or performed.

Socialism, p. 166

The nationalization of intellectual life, which must be attempted under Socialism, must make all intellectual progress impossible.

Socialism, p. 167

No censor, no emperor, no pope, has ever possessed the power to suppress intellectual freedom which would be possessed by a socialist community.

Socialism, p. 169

That Socialism would be immediately practicable if an omnipotent and omniscient Deity were personally to descend to take in hand the government of human affairs is incontestable.

Socialism, p. 183

The ideas of modern Socialism have not sprung from proletarian brains. They were originated by intellectuals, sons of the bourgeoisie, not of wage-earners.

Socialism, p. 317

No one shall be idle if I have to work; no one shall be rich if I am poor. Thus we see, again and again, that resentment lies behind all socialist ideas.

Socialism, p. 394

The impracticability of Socialism is the result of intellectual, not moral, incapacity. . . . Even angels, if they were endowed only with human reason, could not form a socialistic community.

Socialism, p. 407

In fact Socialism is not in the least what it pretends to be. It is not the pioneer of a better and finer world, but the spoiler of what thousands of years of civilization have created. It does not build; it destroys. For destruction is the essence of it. It produces nothing, it only consumes what the social order based on private ownership in the means of production has created.

Socialism, p. 414

Not mythical “material productive forces,” but reason and ideas determine the course of human affairs. What is needed to stop the trend toward socialism and despotism is commonsense and moral courage.

Planned Chaos, p. 90

Socialism is unrealizable as an economic system because a socialist society would not have any possibility of resorting to economic calculation. This is why it cannot be considered as a system of society’s economic organization. It is a means to disintegrate social cooperation and to bring about poverty and chaos.

Money, Method, and the Market Process, p. 310

The socialists of Eastern Germany, the self-styled German Democratic Republic, spectacularly admitted the bankruptcy of the Marxian dreams when they built a wall to prevent their comrades from fleeing into the non-socialist part of Germany.

Money, Method, and the Market Process, p. 231

SOCIETY

It is always the individual who thinks. Society does not think any more than it eats or drinks. The evolution of human reasoning from the naive thinking of primitive man to the more subtle thinking of modern science took place within society. However, thinking itself is always an achievement of individuals. There is joint action, but no joint thinking.

Human Action, p. 177; p. 177

Society is essentially the mutual exchange of services.

Liberty and Property, pp. 18–19

Society is division of labor and combination of labor.

Human Action, p. 143; p. 143

We may call consciousness of kind, sense of community, or sense of belonging together the acknowledgement of the fact that all other human beings are potential collaborators in the struggle for survival because they are capable of recognizing the mutual benefits of cooperation.

Human Action, p. 144; p. 144

Society is division and association of labor. In the final analysis, there is no conflict of interest between society and the individual, as everyone can pursue his interest more efficiently in society than in isolation.

A Critique of Interventionism, p. 112

Civilization is an achievement of the “bourgeois” spirit, not of the spirit of conquest. Those barbarian peoples who did not substitute working for plundering disappeared from the historical scene.

Human Action, p. 645; p. 650

Society is the product of thought and will.

Socialism, p. 258

Man is inconceivable as an isolated being, for humanity exists only as a social phenomenon and mankind transcended the stage of animality only in so far as co-operation evolved the social relationships between the individuals. Evolution from the human animal to the human being was made possible by and achieved by means of social cooperation and by that alone.

Socialism, p. 259

Within the frame of social cooperation there can emerge between members of society feelings of sympathy and friendship and a sense of belonging together. These feelings are the source of man’s most delightful and most sublime experiences. They are the most precious adornment of life; they lift the animal species man to the heights of a really human existence. However, they are not, as some have asserted, the agents that have brought about social relations. They are fruits of social cooperation.

Human Action, p. 144; p. 144

Human society is an intellectual and spiritual phenomenon. It is the outcome of a purposeful utilization of a universal law determining cosmic becoming, viz., the higher productivity of the division of labor. As with every instance of action, the recognition of the laws of nature is put into the service of man’s efforts to improve his conditions.

Human Action, p. 145; p. 145

Every step by which an individual substitutes concerted action for isolated action results in an immediate and recognizable improvement in his conditions. The advantages derived from peaceful cooperation and division of labor are universal.

Human Action, p. 146; p. 146

SOUND MONEY

It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments. Ideologically it belongs in the same class with political constitutions and bills of rights.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 454

Thus the sound-money principle has two aspects. It is affirmative in approving the market’s choice of a commonly used medium of exchange. It is negative in obstructing the government’s propensity to meddle with the currency system.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 455

There cannot be stable money within an environment dominated by ideologies hostile to the preservation of economic freedom.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 480

Sound money still means today what it meant in the nineteenth century: the gold standard.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 480

Perpetual vigilance on the part of the citizens can achieve what a thousand laws and dozens of alphabetical bureaus with hordes of employees never have and never will achieve: the preservation of a sound currency.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 495

SOVEREIGNTY

A state without territory is an empty concept. A state without sovereignty is a contradiction in terms.

Omnipotent Government, p. 46

SPECULATION

Without speculation there can be no economic activity reaching beyond the immediate present.

Socialism, p. 125

Speculation is the link that binds isolated economic action to the economic activity of society as a whole.

Socialism, p. 182

Speculation in the capitalist system performs a function which must be performed in any economic system however organized: it provides for the adjustment of supply and demand over time and space.

Socialism, p. 125

Speculation performs an economic service which cannot conceivably be eliminated from any economic system.

Socialism, p. 125

Every action is a speculation, i.e., guided by a definite opinion concerning the uncertain conditions of the future.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 51

The influence of speculation cannot alter the average level of prices over a given period; what it can do is to diminish the gap between the highest and the lowest prices. Price fluctuations are reduced by speculation, not aggravated, as the popular legend has it.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 286

Speculation anticipates future price changes; its economic function consists in evening out price differences between different places and different points in time and, through the pressure which prices exert on production and consumption, in adapting stocks and demands to each other.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 145

SPIRIT

Not with weapons but only with the spirit can a minority overcome the majority.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 106

What warrants success in a fight for freedom and civilization is not merely material equipment but first of all the spirit that animates those handling the weapons. This heroic spirit cannot be bought by inflation.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 469

SPORTS

Games are not reality, but merely play. They are civilized man’s outlet for deeply ingrained instincts of enmity. When the game comes to an end, the victors and the defeated shake hands and return to the reality of their social life, which is cooperation and not fighting.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 88

A game is a pastime, is a means to employ one’s leisure time and to banish boredom.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 90

No game can, apart from the pleasure it gives to the players and to the spectators, contribute anything to the improvement of human conditions.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 90

STANDARD OF LIVING

The characteristic feature of modern capitalism is mass production of goods destined for consumption by the masses. The result is a tendency towards a continuous improvement in the average standard of living, a progressing enrichment of the many.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 1

Under capitalism the common man enjoys amenities which in ages gone by were unknown and therefore inaccessible even to the richest people.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 3

The European worker today lives under more favorable and more agreeable outward circumstances than the pharaoh of Egypt once did, in spite of the fact that the pharaoh commanded thousands of slaves, while the worker has nothing to depend on but the strength and skill of his hands.

Liberalism, pp. 22–23

The standard of living of the common man is highest in those countries which have the greatest number of wealthy entrepreneurs.

Planning for Freedom, p. 135

How uneasy an American worker would be if he were forced to live in the style of a medieval lord and to miss the plumbing facilities and the other gadgets he simply takes for granted!

Human Action, pp. 612; p. 616

Mankind has not reached the stage of ultimate technological perfection. There is ample room for further progress and for further improvement of the standards of living. The creative and inventive spirit subsists notwithstanding all assertions to the contrary. But it flourishes only where there is economic freedom.

Omnipotent Government, p. x

STATE

The ordered organization of coercion we call the State.

Socialism, p. 280

The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning. Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.

Human Action, p. 715; p. 719

The whole of mankind’s progress has had to be achieved against the resistance and opposition of the state and its power of coercion.

Liberalism, p. 58

A new type of superstition has got hold of people’s minds, the worship of the state. People demand the exercise of the methods of coercion and compulsion, of violence and threat. Woe to anybody who does not bend his knee to the fashionable idols!

Omnipotent Government, p. 11

The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men. The worst evils which mankind ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster.

Omnipotent Government, p. 47

He who proclaims the godliness of the State and the infallibility of its priests, the bureaucrats, is considered as an impartial student of the social sciences.

Planned Chaos, p. 16

It is characteristic of current political thinking to welcome every suggestion which aims at enlarging the influence of government.

On the Manipulation of Money and Credit, p. 107

How fine the world would be if the “State” were free to cure all ills! It is one step only from such a mentality to the perfect totalitarianism of Stalin and Hitler.

Bureaucracy, pp. 75–76

No reform can render perfectly satisfactory the operation of an institution the essential activity of which consists in inflicting pain.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 100

Every step a government takes beyond the fulfillment of its essential functions 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

Louis XIV was very frank and sincere when he said: I am the State. The modern etatist is modest. He says: I am the servant of the State; but, he implies, the State is God. You could revolt against a Bourbon king, and the French did it. This was, of course, a struggle of man against man. But you cannot revolt against the god State and against his humble handy man, the bureaucrat.

Bureaucracy, pp. 74–75

Après nous le déluge (After us, the deluge) is an old maxim of government.

Socialism, p. 179

There is no reason to idolize the police power and ascribe to its omnipotence and omniscience. There are things which it can certainly not accomplish. It cannot conjure away the scarcity of the factors of production, it cannot make people more prosperous, it cannot raise the productivity of labor. All it can achieve is to prevent gangsters from frustrating the efforts of those people who are intent upon promoting material well-being.

Human Action, p. 827; p. 831

It is not God. It is simply compulsion and coercion; it is the police power.

Omnipotent Government, p. 47

The state is a human institution, not a superhuman being. He who says “state” means coercion and compulsion. He who says: There should be a law concerning this matter, means: The armed men of the government should force people to do what they do not want to do, or not to do what they like. He who says: This law should be better enforced, means: the police should force people to obey this law. He who says: The state is God, deifies arms and prisons.

Omnipotent Government, p. 47

Not every apparatus of compulsion and coercion is called a state. Only one which is powerful enough to maintain its existence, for some time at least, by its own force is commonly called a state. A gang of robbers, which because of the comparative weakness of its forces has no prospect of successfully resisting for any length of time the forces of another organization, is not entitled to be called a state. The state will either smash or tolerate a gang. In the first case the gang is not a state because its independence lasts for a short time only; in the second case it is not a state because it does not stand on its own might.

Omnipotent Government, p. 46

The apparatus of compulsion and coercion is always operated by mortal men.

Omnipotent Government, p. 47

We see that as soon as we surrender the principle that the state should not interfere in any questions touching of the individual’s mode of life, we end by regulating and restricting the latter down to the smallest detail. The personal freedom of the individual is abrogated. He becomes a slave of the community bound to obey the dictates of the majority.

Liberalism, p. 54

The essence of etatism is to take from one group in order to give to another. The more it can take the more it can give. It is to the interest of those whom the government wishes to favor that their state become as large as possible.

Omnipotent Government, p. 94

Whoever wishes peace among peoples must fight statism.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 77

STATISTICS

Statistics is a method for the presentation of historical facts concerning prices and other relevant data of human action. It is not economics and cannot produce economic theorems and theories. The statistics of prices is economic history.

Human Action, p. 348; p. 351

There is no such thing as quantitative economics.

Human Action, p. 348; p. 351

Figures alone prove or disprove nothing. Only the conclusions drawn from the collected material can do this. And these are theoretical.

Socialism, p. 325

The idea that changes in the purchasing power of money may be measured is scientifically untenable.

On the Manipulation of Money and Credit, p. 88

It is not possible even to measure variations in the purchasing power of money.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 257

Statistics is the description in numerical terms of experiences concerning phenomena not subject to regular uniformity. . . . Statistics is therefore a specific method of history.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 55

There is an inclination in the United States and in Anglo-Saxon countries generally to overestimate in a quite extraordinary manner the significance of index methods. In these countries, it is entirely overlooked that the scientific exactness of these methods leaves much to be desired, that they can never yield anything more than a rough result at best, and that the question whether one or other method of calculation is preferable can never be solved by scientific means.

The Theory of Money and Credit, pp. 445–46

SYNDICALISM

The syndicalistically organized state would be no socialist state but a state of worker capitalism, since the individual worker groups would be owners of the capital. Syndicalism would make all repatterning of production impossible; it leaves no room free for economic progress. In its entire intellectual character it suits the age of peasants and craftsmen, in which economic relations are rather stationary.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 199

It is not unfair to call syndicalism the economic philosophy of short-sighted people, of those adamant conservatives who look askance upon any innovation and are so blinded by envy that they call down curses upon those who provide them with more, better, and cheaper products. They are like patients who grudge the doctor his success in curing them of a malady.

Human Action, p. 810; p. 814

TARIFFS

All that a tariff can achieve is to divert production from those locations in which the output per unit of input is higher to locations in which it is lower. It does not increase production; it curtails it.

Human Action, p. 737; p. 744

The only case that can be made on behalf of protective tariffs is this: the sacrifices they impose could be offset by other, noneconomic advantages—for instance, from a national and military point of view it could be desirable to more or less isolate a country from the world.

A Critique of Interventionism, p. 23

The imposition of a duty on the importation of a commodity burdens the consumers.

Human Action, p. 742; p. 749

Many people look upon tariff protection as if it were a privilege accorded to their nation’s wage earners, procuring them, for the full duration of its existence, a higher standard of living than they would enjoy under free trade.

Human Action, p. 745; p. 752

TAXES

Some experts have declared that it is necessary to tax the people until it hurts. I disagree with these sadists.

Defense, Controls, and Inflation, p. 333

If the present tax rates had been in effect from the beginning of our century, many who are millionaires today would live under more modest circumstances. But all those new branches of industry which supply the masses with articles unheard of before would operate, if at all, on a much smaller scale, and their products would be beyond the reach of the common man.

Planning for Freedom, p. 16

Taxing profits is tantamount to taxing success.

Planning for Freedom, p. 121

Estate taxes of the height they have already attained for the upper brackets are no longer to be qualified as taxes. They are measures of expropriation.

Planning for Freedom, p. 32

Progressive taxation of income and profits means that precisely those parts of the income which people would have saved and invested are taxed away.

Economic Policy, p. 84

The metamorphosis of taxes into weapons of destruction is the mark of present-day public finance.

Human Action, p. 734; p. 741

Taxes are paid because the taxpayers are afraid of offering resistance to the tax gatherers. They know that any disobedience or resistance is hopeless. As long as this is the state of affairs, the government is able to collect the money that it wants to spend.

Human Action, No Entry; p. 719

Taxes are necessary. But the system of discriminatory taxation universally accepted under the misleading name of progressive taxation of income and inheritance is not a mode of taxation. It is rather a mode of disguised expropriation of the successful capitalists and entrepreneurs.

Human Action, p. 803; p. 807

Nothing is more calculated to make a demagogue popular than a constantly reiterated demand for heavy taxes on the rich. Capital levies and high income taxes on the larger incomes are extraordinarily popular with the masses, who do not have to pay them.

Socialism, p. 447

TECHNOLOGY

What begot all those technological and therapeutical achievements that characterize our age was not science, but the social and political system of capitalism. Only in the climate of huge capital accumulation could experimentalism develop from a pastime of geniuses like Archimedes and Leonardo da Vinci into a well-organized systematic pursuit of knowledge.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 127

The research activities of the experimental natural sciences are in themselves neutral with regard to any philosophical and political issue. But they can thrive and become beneficial for mankind only where there prevails a social philosophy of individualism and freedom.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 128

THEORY

There cannot be too much of a correct theory.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 141

TIME

Man is subject to the passing of time. He comes into existence, grows, becomes old, and passes away. His time is scarce. He must economize it as he economizes other scarce factors.

Human Action, p. 101; p. 101

Time for man is not a homogenous substance of which only length counts. It is not a more or a less in dimension. . . . It is an irreversible flux the fractions of which appear in different perspective according to whether they are nearer to or remoter from the instant of valuation and decision. Satisfaction of a want in the nearer future is, other things being equal, preferred to that in the farther distant future. Present goods are more valuable than future goods.

Human Action, pp. 480–81; p. 483

The value of time, i.e., time preference or the higher valuation of want-satisfaction in nearer periods of the future as against that in remoter periods, is an essential element in human action. It determines every choice and every action. There is no man for whom the difference between sooner and later does not count. The time element is instrumental in the formation of all prices of all commodities and services.

Human Action, p. 490; p. 493

TOLERANCE

A free man must be able to endure it when his fellow men act and live otherwise than he considers proper. He must free himself from the habit, just as soon as something does not please him, of calling for the police.

Liberalism, p. 55

TOTALITARIANISM

It is vain to fight totalitarianism by adopting totalitarian methods. Freedom can only be won by men unconditionally committed to the principles of freedom. The first requisite for a better social order is the return to unrestricted freedom of thought and speech.

Omnipotent Government, p. 14

TREATY OF VERSAILLES

The four peace treaties of Versailles, Saint Germain, Trianon, and Sèvres together form the most clumsy diplomatic settlement ever carried out. They will be remembered as outstanding examples of political failure.

Omnipotent Government, p. 211

The Treaty of Versailles was not unfair to Germany and it did not plunge the German people into misery.

Omnipotent Government, p. 211

It is a grotesque misrepresentation of the facts to assert that these payments made Germany poor and condemned the Germans to starvation. They would not have seriously affected the German standard of living even if the Germans had paid these sums out of their own pockets and not, as they did in fact, out of money borrowed from abroad.

Omnipotent Government, p. 214

TRUTH

Truth has its own way. It works and produces effects even if party programs and textbooks refuse to acknowledge it as truth.

Planning for Freedom, p. 11

Truth is not the halfway point between two untruths.

On the Manipulation of Money and Credit, p. 88

Yet the criterion of truth is that it works even if nobody is prepared to acknowledge it.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 94

At least one of the characteristic marks of a true theory is that action based on it succeeds in attaining the expected result. In this sense, truth works while untruth does not work.

Theory and History, p. 123

Truth persists and works, even if nobody is left to utter it.

Austrian Economics: An Anthology, p. 76

Truth refers to what is or was, not to a state of affairs that is not or was not but would suit the wishes of the truth-seeker better.

Theory and History, p. 298

Governments, political parties, pressure groups, and the bureaucrats of the educational hierarchy think they can avoid the inevitable consequences of unsuitable measures by boycotting and silencing the independent economists. But truth persists and works, even if nobody is left to utter it.

The Historical Setting of the Austrian School, p. 45

TYRANNY

In the hegemonic state there is neither right nor law; there are only directives and regulations which the director may change daily and apply with what discrimination he pleases which the wards must obey. The wards have one freedom only: to obey without asking questions.

Human Action, p. 199; p. 198

The substitution of economic planning for the market economy removes all freedom and leaves to the individual merely the right to obey. The authority directing all economic matters controls all aspects of a man’s life and activities. It is the only employer. All labor becomes compulsory labor because the employee must accept what the chief deigns to offer him. The economic tsar determines what and how much of each the consumer may consume. There is no sector of human life in which a decision is left to the individual’s value judgments. The authority assigns a definite task to him, trains him for his job, and employs him at the place and in the manner it deems expedient.

Human Action, p. 284; p. 287

A man is free as far as he shapes his life according to his own plans. A man whose fate is determined by the plans of a superior authority, in which the exclusive power to plan is vested, is not free in the sense in which the term “free” was used and understood by all people until the semantic revolution of our day brought about a confusion of tongues.

Human Action, p. 285; p. 287

It is the subordination of every individual’s whole life, work, and leisure, to the orders of those in power and office. It is the reduction of man to a cog in an all-embracing machine of compulsion and coercion. It forces the individual to renounce any activity of which the government does not approve. It tolerates no expression of dissent. It is the transformation of society into a strictly disciplined labor-army.

Bureaucracy, p. 17

It holds the individual in tight rein from the womb to the tomb.

Bureaucracy, p. 17

UNCERTAINTY

The most that can be attained with regard to reality is probability.

Human Action, p. 105; p. 105

The uncertainty of the future is already implied in the very notion of action. That man acts and that the future is uncertain are by no means two independent matters. They are only two different modes of establishing one thing.

Human Action, p. 105; p. 105

Understanding is always based on incomplete knowledge.

Human Action, p. 112; p. 112

There is in the course of human events no stability and consequently no safety.

Human Action, p. 113; p. 113

In the universe there is never and nowhere stability and immobility. Change and transformation are essential features of life. Each state of affairs is transient; each age is an age of transition. In human life there is never calm and repose. Life is a process, not a perseverance in a status quo.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 106

It is certainly true that the necessity of adjusting oneself again and again to changing conditions is onerous. But change is the essence of life. In an unhampered market economy the absence of security, i.e., the absence of protection for vested interests, is the principle that makes for a steady improvement in material well-being.

Human Action, p. 848; p. 852

It is a poor makeshift to call any age an age of transition. In the living world there is always change. Every age is an age of transition.

Human Action, p. 855; p. 860

One of the fundamental conditions of man’s existence and action is the fact that he does not know what will happen in the future.

Theory and History, p. 180

What a man can say about the future is always merely speculative anticipation.

Theory and History, p. 203

UNEMPLOYMENT

Government spending cannot create additional jobs. If the government provides the funds required by taxing the citizens or by borrowing from the public, it abolishes on the one hand as many jobs as it creates on the other.

Planned Chaos, pp. 20–21

It is obviously futile to attempt to eliminate unemployment by embarking upon a program of public works that would otherwise not have been undertaken. The necessary resources for such projects must be withdrawn by taxes or loans from the application they would otherwise have found. Unemployment in one industry can, in this way, be mitigated only to the extent that it is increased in another.

Liberalism, p. 85

Labor is more scarce than material factors of production.

Human Action, p. 136; p. 136

If a job-seeker cannot obtain the position he prefers, he must look for another kind of job. If he cannot find an employer ready to pay him as much as he would like to earn, he must abate his pretensions. If he refuses, he will not get any job. He remains unemployed. What causes unemployment is the fact that—contrary to the above-mentioned doctrine of the worker’s inability to wait—those eager to earn wages can and do wait.

Human Action, p. 595; p. 598

Mass unemployment is not proof of the failure of capitalism, but the proof of the failure of traditional union methods.

Planning for Freedom, p. 13

On a free labor market wage rates tend toward a height at which all employers ready to pay these rates can find all the men they need and all the workers ready to work for this rate can find jobs. There prevails a tendency toward full employment.

Planning for Freedom, p. 84

There prevails on a free labor market a tendency toward full employment.

Planning for Freedom, p. 153

The result of the governments’ and the unions’ meddling with the height of wage rates cannot be anything else than an incessant increase in the number of unemployed.

Planning for Freedom, p. 192

Permanent mass unemployment destroys the moral foundations of the social order. The young people, who, having finished their training for work, are forced to remain idle, are the ferment out of which the most radical political movements are formed. In their ranks the soldiers of the coming revolutions are recruited.

Socialism, p. 440

The need of society for labor is never satisfied.

Socialism, p. 129

Unemployment is a problem of wages, not of work.

Socialism, p. 439

It is not capitalism which is responsible for the evils of permanent mass unemployment, but the policy which paralyses its working.

Socialism, p. 441

There is but one remedy for lasting unemployment of great masses; the abandonment of the policy of raising wage rates by government decree or by the application or the threat of violence.

Omnipotent Government, p. 65

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE

Unemployment doles can have no other effect than the perpetuation of unemployment.

Socialism, p. 440

Assistance granted to the unemployed does not dispose of unemployment. It makes it easier for the unemployed to remain idle.

Human Action, p. 770; p. 776

For the unemployed to be granted support by the government or by the unions only serves to enlarge the evil. If what is involved is a case of unemployment springing from dynamic changes in the economy, then the unemployment benefits only result in postponing the adjustment of the workers to the new conditions.

Liberalism, p. 84

UNIONS

Exclusively preoccupied with wage rates and pensions, the unions boast of their Pyrrhic victories. The union members are not conscious of the fact that their fate is tied up with the flowering of their employers’ enterprises.

Planning for Freedom, p. 91

The labor unions are deadly foes of every new machine.

Human Action, p. 269; p. 269

They and their members and officials have acquired the power and the right to commit wrongs to person and property, to deprive individuals of the means of earning a livelihood, and to commit many other acts which no one can do with impunity.

Planning for Freedom, p. 191

As people think that they owe to unionism their high standard of living, they condone violence, coercion, and intimidation on the part of unionized labor and are indifferent to the curtailment of personal freedom inherent in the union-shop and closed-shop clauses.

Planning for Freedom, p. 153

The labor unions aim at a monopolistic position on the labor market. But once they have attained it, their policies are restrictive and not monopoly price policies. They are intent upon restricting the supply of labor in their field without bothering about the fate of those excluded.

Human Action, p. 374; p. 377

No social cooperation under the division of labor is possible when some people or unions of people are granted the right to prevent by violence and the threat of violence other people from working.

Planned Chaos, p. 27

The labor unions of the Anglo-Saxon countries favored participation in the Great War in order to eliminate the last remnants of the liberal doctrine of free movement and migration of labor.

A Critique of Interventionism, p. 123

No one has ever succeeded in the effort to demonstrate that unionism could improve the conditions and raise the standard of living of all those eager to earn wages.

Human Action, pp. 764–65; pp. 770–71

The issue is not the right to form associations. It is whether or not any association of private citizens should be granted the privilege of resorting with impunity to violent action. It is the same problem that relates to the activities of the Ku Klux Klan.

Human Action, p. 773; p. 779

Strikes, sabotage, violent action and terrorism of every kind are not economic means. They are destructive means, designed to interrupt the movement of economic life. They are weapons of war which must inevitably lead to the destruction of society.

Socialism, p. 307

The cornerstone of trade unionism is compulsory membership.

Socialism, p. 435

The weapon of the trade union is the strike. It must be borne in mind that every strike is an act of coercion, a form of extortion, a measure of violence directed against all who might act in opposition to the strikers’ intentions.

Socialism, p. 435

The policy of strike, violence, and sabotage can claim no merit whatever for any improvement in the workers’ position.

Socialism, p. 437

UNITED NATIONS

The United Nations is simply a meeting place for useless discussions.

Economic Policy, p. 85

The League of Nations did not fail because its organization was deficient. It failed because it lacked the spirit of genuine liberalism. It was a convention of governments imbued with the spirit of economic nationalism and entirely committed to the principles of economic warfare.

Human Action, p. 683; pp. 687–88

It is futile to place confidence in treaties, conferences, and such bureaucratic outfits as the League of Nations and the United Nations. Plenipotentiaries, office clerks and experts make a poor show in fighting ideologies. The spirit of conquest cannot be smothered by red tape. What is needed is a radical change in ideologies and economic policies.

Human Action, p. 821; p. 825

UTOPIANS

The characteristic feature of all utopian plans from that of Plato down to that of Marx is the rigid petrification of all human conditions. Once the “perfect” state of social affairs is attained, no further changes ought to be tolerated.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 123

VALUE

Value is not intrinsic, it is not in things. It is within us; it is the way in which man reacts to the conditions of his environment. Neither is value in words and doctrines, it is reflected in human conduct. It is not what a man or groups of men say about value that counts, but how they act.

Human Action, p. 96; p. 96

A judgment of value does not measure, it arranges in a scale of degrees, it grades. It is expressive of an order of preference and sequence, but not expressive of measure and weight.

Human Action, p. 97; p. 97

It is vain to speak of any calculation of values. Calculation is possible only with cardinal numbers. The difference between the valuation of two states of affairs is entirely psychical and personal. It is not open to any projection into the external world. It can be sensed only by the individual. It cannot be communicated or imparted to any fellow man.

Human Action, p. 97; p. 97

There is no yardstick to measure the aesthetic worth of a poem or of a building.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 75

There is no method available to construct a unit of value.

Human Action, p. 206; p. 205

Value is not intrinsic. It is not in things and conditions but in the valuing subject.

Theory and History, p. 23

There are no such things as absolute values, independent of the subjective preferences of erring men. Judgments of values are the outcome of human arbitrariness. They reflect all the shortcomings and weaknesses of their authors.

Bureaucracy, p. 26

WAGE RATES

Like other factors of production, labor is also valued according to its usefulness in satisfying human wants.

On the Manipulation of Money and Credit, p. 177

In the long run the worker can never get more than the consumer allows.

Bureaucracy, p. 37

There is but one way toward an increase of real wage rates for all those eager to earn wages: the progressive accumulation of new capital and the improvement of technical methods of production which the new capital brings about. The true interests of labor coincide with those of business.

Bureaucracy, p. 112

The only means to raise wage rates permanently for all those eager to earn wages is to raise the productivity of labor by increasing the per-head quota of capital invested and improving the methods of production.

Planning for Freedom, p. 6

The buyers do not pay for the toil and trouble the worker took nor for the length of time he spent in working. They pay for the products.

Planning for Freedom, p. 151

The better the tools are which the worker uses in his job, the more he can perform in an hour, the higher is, consequently, his remuneration.

Planning for Freedom, p. 151

The height of wage rates is determined by the consumers’ appraisal of the value the worker’s labor adds to the value of the article available for sale.

Planning for Freedom, p. 190

It is not the Hollywood film corporation that pays the wages of a movie star; it is the people who pay admission to the movies. And it is not the entrepreneurs of a boxing match who pay the enormous demands of the prize fighters; it is the people who pay admission to the fight.

Economic Policy, p. 9–10

There is only one efficacious way toward a rise in real wage rates and an improvement of the standard of living of the wage earners: to increase the per-head quota of capital invested.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 464–65

Minimum wage rates, whether decreed and enforced by the government or by labor union pressure and violence, result in mass unemployment.

Planning for Freedom, p. 27

WAR AND PEACE

Whoever wishes peace among peoples must fight statism.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 77

Modern society, based as it is on the division of labor, can be preserved only under conditions of lasting peace.

Liberalism, p. 44

The market economy involves peaceful cooperation. It bursts asunder when the citizens turn into warriors and, instead of exchanging commodities and services, fight one another.

Human Action, p. 817; p. 821

Modern war is not a war of royal armies. It is a war of the peoples, a total war. It is a war of states which do not leave to their subjects any private sphere; they consider the whole population a part of the armed forces. Whoever does not fight must work for the support and equipment of the army. Army and people are one and the same. The citizens passionately participate in the war. For it is their state, their God, who fights.

Omnipotent Government, p. 104

What the incompatibility of war and capitalism really means is that war and high civilization are incompatible.

Human Action, p. 824; p. 828

Society has arisen out of the works of peace; the essence of society is peacemaking. Peace and not war is the father of all things. Only economic action has created the wealth around us; labor, not the profession of arms, brings happiness. Peace builds, war destroys.

Socialism, p. 59

All the materials needed for the conduct of a war must be provided by restriction of civilian consumption, by using up a part of the capital available and by working harder. The whole burden of warring falls upon the living generation.

Human Action, p. 228; p. 227

At the breakfast table of every citizen sits in wartime an invisible guest, as it were, a G.I. who shares the meal. In the citizen’s garage stays not only the family car but besides—invisibly—a tank or a plane. The important fact is that this G.I. needs more in food, clothing, and other things than he used to consume as a civilian and that military equipment wears out much quicker than civilian equipment. The costs of a modern war are enormous.

Defense, Controls, and Inflation, p. 331

Men are fighting one another because they are convinced that the extermination and liquidation of adversaries is the only means of promoting their own well-being.

Human Action, p. 175; p. 176

The existence of the armaments industries is a consequence of the warlike spirit, not its cause.

Human Action, p. 297; p. 300

What basis for war could there still be, once all peoples had been set free?

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 35

The liberal thinks otherwise. He is convinced that victorious war is an evil even for the victor, that peace is always better than war. He demands no sacrifice from the stronger, but only that he should come to realize where his true interests lie and learn to understand that peace is for him, the stronger, just as advantageous as it is for the weaker.

Liberalism, p. 24

Wars, foreign and domestic (revolutions, civil wars), are more likely to be avoided the closer the division of labor binds men.

A Critique of Interventionism, p. 115

The pacifistic line of argument goes too far if it simply denies that a people can gain by war.

Nation, State, and Economy, pp. 152–53

War is the alternative to freedom of foreign investment as realized by the international capital market.

Human Action, p. 499; p. 502

The statement that one man’s boon is the other man’s damage is valid with regard to robbery, war, and booty. The robber’s plunder is the damage of the despoiled victim. But war and commerce are two different things.

Human Action, p. 662; p. 666

The philosophy of protectionism is a philosophy of war. The wars of our age are not at variance with popular economic doctrines; they are, on the contrary, the inescapable result of consistent application of these doctrines.

Human Action, p. 683; p. 687

What has transformed the limited war between royal armies into total war, the clash between peoples, is not technicalities of military art, but the substitution of the welfare state for the laissez-faire state.

Human Action, p. 820; p. 824

Under laissez faire peaceful coexistence of a multitude of sovereign nations is possible. Under government control of business it is impossible.

Human Action, p. 820; p. 824

In the long run war and the preservation of the market economy are incompatible. Capitalism is essentially a scheme for peaceful nations. But this does not mean that a nation which is forced to repel foreign aggressors must substitute government control for private enterprise. If it were to do this, it would deprive itself of the most efficient means of defense. There is no record of a socialist nation which defeated a capitalist nation. In spite of their much glorified war socialism, the Germans were defeated in both World Wars.

Human Action, p. 824; p. 828

The emergence of the international division of labor requires the total abolition of war.

Human Action, p. 827; p. 831

Modern war is merciless, it does not spare pregnant women or infants; it is indiscriminate killing and destroying. It does not respect the rights of neutrals. Millions are killed, enslaved, or expelled from the dwelling places in which their ancestors lived for centuries. Nobody can foretell what will happen in the next chapter of this endless struggle. This has little to do with the atomic bomb. The root of the evil is not the construction of new, more dreadful weapons. It is the spirit of conquest. It is probable that scientists will discover some methods of defense against the atomic bomb. But this will not alter things, it will merely prolong for a short time the process of the complete destruction of civilization.

Human Action, p. 828; p. 832

To defeat the aggressors is not enough to make peace durable. The main thing is to discard the ideology that generates war.

Human Action, p. 828; p. 832

Ownership turns the fighting man into the economic man. Only the exclusion of private property can maintain the military character of the State. Only the warrior, who has no other occupation apart from war than preparation for war, is always ready for war. Men occupied in affairs may wage wars of defense but not long wars of conquest.

Socialism, pp. 220–21

Within a world of free trade and democracy there are no incentives for war and conquest.

Omnipotent Government, p. 3

Only in the case of primitive peoples does war lead to the selection of the stronger and more gifted, and that among civilized peoples it leads to a deterioration of the race by unfavorable selection.

Socialism, p. 290

The only means to lasting peace is to remove the root causes of war.

Omnipotent Government, p. 6

But what is needed for a satisfactory solution of the burning problem of international relations is neither a new office with more committees, secretaries, commissioners, reports, and regulations, nor a new body of armed executioners, but the radical overthrow of mentalities and domestic policies which must result in conflict.

Omnipotent Government, p. 6

Full freedom of movement of persons and goods, the most comprehensive protection of the property and freedom of each individual, removal of all state compulsion in the school system, in short, the most exact and complete application of the ideas of 1789, are the prerequisites of peaceful conditions.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 96

If you want to abolish war, you must eliminate its causes. What is needed is to restrict government activities to the preservation of life, health, and private property, and thereby to safeguard the working of the market. Sovereignty must not be used for inflicting harm on anyone, whether citizen or foreigner.

Omnipotent Government, p. 138

If some peoples pretend that history or geography gives them the right to subjugate other races, nations, or peoples, there can be no peace.

Omnipotent Government, p. 15

Only one thing can conquer war—that liberal attitude of mind which can see nothing in war but destruction and annihilation, and which can never wish to bring about a war, because it regards war as injurious even to the victors.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 433

If war is regarded as advantageous, then laws . . . will not be allowed to stand in the way of going to war. On the first day of any war, all the laws opposing obstacles to it will be swept aside.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 434

The way to eternal peace does not lead through strengthening state and central power, as socialism strives for.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 96

History has witnessed the failure of many endeavors to impose peace by war, cooperation by coercion, unanimity by slaughtering dissidents. . . . A lasting order cannot be established by bayonets.

Omnipotent Government, pp. 6–7

War can really cause no economic boom, at least not directly, since an increase in wealth never does result from destruction of goods.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 154

Not through war and victory but only through work can a nation create the preconditions for the well-being of its members. Conquering nations finally perish, either because they are annihilated by strong ones or because the ruling class is culturally overwhelmed by the subjugated.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 87

Economically considered, war and revolution are always bad business.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 152

The essence of so-called war prosperity; it enriches some by what it takes from others. It is not rising wealth but a shifting of wealth and income.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 158

There is but one field of public administration in which the criterion of success or failure is unquestionable: the waging of war. But even here the only thing certain is whether the operation has been crowned with success.

Liberalism, p. 98

War socialism was by no means complete socialism, but it was full and true socialization without exception if one had kept on the path that had been taken.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 173

War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings. The earthquake means good business for construction workers, and cholera improves the business of physicians, pharmacists, and undertakers; but no one has for that reason yet sought to celebrate earthquakes and cholera as stimulators of the productive forces in the general interest.

Nation, State, and Economy, p. 154

Interventionism generates economic nationalism, and economic nationalism generates bellicosity. If men and commodities are prevented from crossing the borderlines, why should not the armies try to pave the way for them?

Human Action, p. 828; p. 832

WEALTH

The riches of successful entrepreneurs is not the cause of anybody’s poverty; it is the consequence of the fact that the consumers are better supplied than they would have been in the absence of the entrepreneur’s effort.

Planning for Freedom, p. 135

A wealthy man can preserve his wealth only by continuing to serve the consumers in the most efficient way.

Human Action, p. 272; p. 271

No investment is safe forever. He who does not use his property in serving the consumers in the most efficient way is doomed to failure.

Human Action, p. 308; p. 312

Profit is not related to or dependent on the amount of capital employed by the entrepreneur. Capital does not “beget” profit. Profit and loss are entirely determined by the success or failure of the entrepreneur to adjust production to the demand of the consumers.

Human Action, p. 295; p. 297

No income can be made safe against changes not adequately foreseen.

Human Action, p. 391; p. 394

Seldom does mercantile and industrial wealth maintain itself in one family for more than two or three generations.

Socialism, p. 338

Fortunes invested in capital do not, as the naive economic philosophy of the common man imagines, represent eternal sources of income.

Socialism, p. 338

An eternal capital investment is as non-existent as a secure one. Every capital investment is speculative; its success cannot be foreseen with absolute assurance.

Socialism, p. 339

In capitalist enterprise there is no secure income and no security of wealth.

Socialism, p. 340

Fortunes cannot grow; someone has to increase them.

Socialism, p. 340

If, as is generally the case, the heirs are not equal to the demands which life makes on an entrepreneur, the inherited wealth rapidly vanishes.

Socialism, p. 340

It is untrue that some are poor because others are rich. If an order of society in which incomes were equal replaced the capitalist order, everyone would become poorer.

Socialism, p. 394

The wealth of the well-to-do of an industrial society is both the cause and effect of the masses well-being.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 113

The masses, in their capacity as consumers, ultimately determine everybody’s revenues and wealth.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 112

WELFARE

The Welfare State is merely a method for transforming the market economy step by step into socialism.

Planning for Freedom, p. 219

The policies advocated by the welfare school remove the incentive to saving on the part of private citizens. On the one hand, the measures directed toward a curtailment of big incomes and fortunes seriously reduce or destroy entirely the wealthier people’s power to save. On the other hand, the sums which people with moderate incomes previously contributed to capital accumulation are manipulated in such a way as to channel them into the lines of consumption.

Human Action, p. 841; pp. 844–45

An essential point in the social philosophy of interventionism is the existence of an inexhaustible fund which can be squeezed forever. The whole system of interventionism collapses when this fountain is drained off: The Santa Claus principle liquidates itself.

Human Action, p. 854; p. 858

All almsgiving inevitably tends to pauperize the recipient.

Socialism, p. 422

If the will to be well and efficient is weakened, illness and inability to work is caused.

Socialism, pp. 431–32

The problems of poor relief are problems of the arrangement of consumption, not of the arrangement of production activities. They are as such beyond the frame of a theory of human action which refers only to the provision of the means required for consumption, not to the way in which these means are consumed. Catallactic theory deals with the methods adopted for the charitable support of the destitute only as far as they can possibly affect the supply of labor. It has sometimes happened that the policies applied in poor relief have encouraged unwillingness to work and the idleness of able-bodied adults.

Human Action, p. 600; p. 603

The Welfare State with its methods of easy money, credit expansion and undisguised inflation continually takes bites out of all claims payable in units of the nation’s legal tender.

Liberty and Property, p. 25

WESTERN CIVILIZATION

Western civilization is based upon the libertarian principle and all its achievements are the result of the actions of free men.

Economic Freedom and Interventionism, p. 150

The distinctive principle of Western social philosophy is individualism.

Liberty and Property, p. 25

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

The eminence of the Western nations consisted in the fact that they succeeded better in checking the spirit of predatory militarism than the rest of mankind and that they thus brought forth the social institutions required for saving and investment on a broader scale.

Human Action, p. 497; p. 500

The nations of Western Europe brought forth the political and institutional conditions for safeguarding saving and investment on a broader scale, and thus provided the entrepreneurs with the capital needed.

Omnipotent Government, p. 101

The essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the arrested and petrified civilizations of the East was and is its concern for freedom from the state.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 98

All the marvelous achievements of Western civilization are fruits grown on the tree of liberty.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 454

WORK

The only means of inducing a man to work more and better is to offer him a higher reward. It is vain to bait him with the joy of labor. When the dictators of Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, and Fascist Italy tried to assign to the joy of labor a definite function in their system of production, they saw their expectations blighted.

Human Action, p. 589; p. 592

The hired man does not owe the employer gratitude; he owes him a definite quantity of work of a definite kind and quality.

Human Action, p. 629; p. 634

The toiler looks at his work as a means for the attainment of an end sought, and the progress of his work delights him as an approach toward his goal. His joy is a foretaste of the satisfaction conveyed by the mediate gratification. In the frame of social cooperation this joy manifests itself in the contentment of being capable of holding one’s ground in the social organism and of rendering services which one’s fellow men appreciates either buying the product or in remunerating the labor expended. The worker rejoices because he gets self-respect and the consciousness of supporting himself and his family and not being dependent on other people’s mercy.

Human Action, p. 586; p. 589

WORKERS

Workers and consumers are, of course, identical.

On the Manipulation of Money and Credit, p. 179

The laborer is an entrepreneur in so far as his wages are determined by the price the market allows for the kind of work he can perform. This price varies according to the change in conditions in the same way in which the price of every other factor of production varies.

Human Action, p. 255; p. 254

The American worker is badly mistaken when he believes that his high standard of living is due to his own excellence.

Planning for Freedom, p. 136

The improvement of well-being brought about by capitalism made it possible for the common man to save and thus to become in a modest way himself a capitalist.

Planning for Freedom, p. 160

Everybody is eager to charge for his services and accomplishments as much as the traffic can bear. In this regard there is no difference between the workers, whether unionized or not, the ministers and teachers on the one hand and the entrepreneurs on the other hand. Neither of them has the right to talk as if he were Francis d’Assisi.

Planning for Freedom, p. 145

A great part of the capital at work in American enterprises is owned by the workers themselves and by other people with modest means.

Economic Policy, p. 86

In the market economy the worker sells his services as other people sell their commodities. The employer is not the employee’s lord. He is simply the buyer of services which he must purchase at their market price.

Human Action, p. 629; pp. 633–34

WORKING CONDITIONS

It is not labor legislation and labor-union pressure that have shortened hours of work and withdrawn married women and children from the factories; it is capitalism, which has made the wage earner so prosperous that he is able to buy more leisure time for himself and his dependents. The nineteenth century’s labor legislation by and large achieved nothing more than to provide a legal ratification for changes which the interplay of market factors had brought about previously.

Human Action, p. 612; pp. 616–17

YOUTH

It has always been the task of the new generation to provoke changes.

Bureaucracy, p. 95

New generations grow up with clear eyes and open minds. And they will approach things from a disinterested, unprejudiced standpoint, they will weigh and examine, will think and act with forethought.

Socialism, p. 13

It is evident that youth is the first victim of the trend toward bureaucratization. The young men are deprived of any opportunity to shape their own fate. For them there is no chance left. They are in fact “lost generations” for they lack the most precious right of every rising generation, the right to contribute something new to the old inventory of civilization.

Bureaucracy, p. 97

Most men are accessible to new ideas only in their youth. With the progress of age the ability to welcome them diminishes, and the knowledge acquired earlier turns into dogma.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 184