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.
Competition on the market aims at assigning to every individual that function in the social system in which he can render to all his fellow men the most valuable of the services he is able to perform.
What impels every man to the utmost exertion in the service of his fellow man. Is, in the market not compulsion on the part of gendarmes, hangmen and penal courts, it is self interest.
A free press can only exist where there is private control over the means of production.
Servile labour disappeared because it could not stand the competition of free labour; its un-profitability sealed its doom in the market economy.
Where there is no market economy, the best intentioned provisions of constitutions and laws remain a dead letter.
Liberalism must be intolerant of every sort of intolerance.
The characteristic feature of a free society is that it can function in spite of the fact that its members disagree in many judgments of value. Freedom really means the freedom to make mistakes.
Progress is precisely that which rules and regulations did not foresee.
Professor von Mises has a splendid analytical mind and an admirable passion for liberty; but as a student of human nature he is worse than null and as a debater he is of Hyde Park standard.
A lasting order cannot be established by bayonets.
Action based on reason, action therefore which is only to be understood by reason, knows only one end, the greatest pleasure of the acting individual.
If one regards inflation as an evil, then one has to stop inflating. One has to balance the budget of the government.
The avowed aim of all utopian movements is to put an end to history and to establish a final and permanent calm.
It is indeed one of the principal drawbacks of every kind of interventionism that it is so difficult to reverse the process.
It is labor alone that is productive: it creates wealth and therewith lays the outward foundations for the inward flowering of man.
The socialist system, however, forbids this fundamental freedom to choose one’s own career. Under socialist conditions, there is only one economic authority, and it has the right to determine all matters concerning production.