Government is a guarantor of liberty and is compatible with liberty only if its range is adequately restricted to the preservation of what is called economic freedom.
Economic theory has demonstrated in an irrefutable way that a prosperity created by an expansionist monetary and credit policy is illusory and must end in a slump, an economic crisis.
Action is an attempt to substitute a more satisfactory state of affairs for a less satisfactory one. We call such a willfully induced alteration an exchange.
The superiority of the gold standard consists in the fact that the value of gold develops independent of political actions.
As the prosperity of the nation and the height of wage rates depend on a continual increase in the capital invested in its plants, mines and farms, it is one of the foremost tasks of good government to remove all obstacles that hinder the accumulation and investment of new capital.
Once the principle is admitted that it is the duty of the government to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments.
Nobody is in a position to decree what should make a fellow man happier.
In relation to the immense sacrifices that the state demands of the individual through the blood tax, it seems rather incidental whether it compensates the soldier more or less abundantly for the loss of time that he suffers from his military-service obligation.
Business is a means- the only means- to increase the quantity of goods available for preserving life and rendering it more agreeable.
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.
War can really cause no economic boom, at least not directly, since an increase in wealth never does result from destruction of goods.
The gold standard makes the money’s purchasing power independent of the changing, ambitions and doctrines of political parties and pressure groups. This is not a defect of the gold standard; it is its main excellence.
Do the American voters know that the unprecedented improvement in their standard of living that the last hundred years brought was the result of the steady rise in the per-head quota of capital invested? Do they realize that every measure leading to capital decumulation jeopardizes their prosperity?
The history of mankind is the history of ideas.
Modern society, based as it is on the division of labor, can be preserved only under conditions of lasting peace.
Reason is the main resource of man in his struggle for survival.
The aim of all struggles for liberty is to keep in bounds the armed defenders of peace, the governors and their constables. The political concept of the individual’s freedom means: freedom from arbitrary action on the part of the police power.
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.
Anarchism misunderstands the real nature of man. It would be practicable only in a world of angels and saints.
This dilettantish inability to comprehend the essential issues of the conduct of production affairs is not only manifested in the writings of Marx and Engels. It permeates no less the contributions of contemporary pseudo-economics.