The masses do not like those who surpass them in any regard. The average man envies and hates those who are different.
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.
A short time ago the demagogues blamed capitalism for the poverty of the masses. Today they rather blame capitalism for the “affluence” that it bestows upon the common man.
The word “Capitalism” expresses, for our age, the sum of all evil. Even the opponents of Socialism are dominated by socialist ideas.
Big business depends entirely on the patronage of those who buy its products: the biggest enterprises loses its power and its influence when it loses its customers.
Every collectivist assumes a different source for the collective will, according to his own political, religious and national convictions.
The greater productivity of work under the division of labor is a unifying influence. It leads men to regard each other as comrades in a joint struggle for welfare, rather than as competitors in a struggle for existence. It makes friends out of enemies, peace out of war, society out of individuals.
Production is not something physical, material, and external; it is a spiritual and intellectual phenomenon.
Lenin’s ideal was to build a nation’s production effort according to the model of the post office.
Government means always coercion and compulsion and is by necessity the opposite of liberty.
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.
Neither the entrepreneurs nor the farmers nor the capitalists determine what has to be produced. The consumers do that.
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.
History does not provide any example of capital accumulation brought about by a government. As far as governments invested in the construction of roads, railroads, and other useful public works, the capital needed was provided by the savings of individual citizens and borrowed by the government.
Historical knowledge is indispensable for those who want to build a better world.
What workers must learn is that the only reason why wage rates are higher in the United States is that the per head quota of capital invested is higher.
The history of mankind is the history of ideas. For it is ideas, theories, and doctrines that guide human action, determine the ultimate ends men aim at, and the choice of the means employed for the attainment of these ends.
There can be no freedom in art and literature where the government determines who shall create them.
The criterion of truth is that it works even if nobody is prepared to acknowledge it.
The truth is that most people lack the intellectual ability and courage to resist a popular movement, however pernicious and ill-considered.