Ludwig Mises Quotes

"Society cannot contribute anything to the breeding and growing of ingenious men. A creative genius cannot be trained. There are no schools for creativeness. A genius is precisely a man who defies all schools and rules, who deviates from the traditional roads of routine and opens up new paths through land inaccessible before. A genius is always a teacher, never a pupil; he is always self-made."

"Innovation is the whim of an elite before it becomes a need of the public."

"Human civilization is not something achieved against nature; it is rather the outcome of the working of the innate qualities of man."

"Whoever wants peace among nations must seek to limit the state and its influence most strictly."

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

"The first thing a genius needs is to breath free air"

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

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

"The root of the evil is not the construction of new, more dreadful weapons. It is the spirit of conquest."

"When we call a capitalist society a consumers' democracy we mean that the power to dispose of the means of production, which belongs to the entrepreneurs and capitalists, can only be acquired by means of the consumers' ballot, held daily in the marketplace."

"The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster."

"Wars of aggression are popular nowadays with those nations convinced that only victory and conquest could improve their material well-being."

"Manufacturing and commercial monopolies owe their origin not to a tendency imminent in a capitalist economy but to governmental interventionist policy directed against free trade and laissez faire."

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