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.
Ludwig von MisesSociety is joint action and cooperation in which each participant sees the other partner's success as a means for the attainment of his own.
Ludwig von MisesThe recurrence of periods of depression and mass unemployment has discredited capitalism in the opinion of injudicious people. Yet these events are not the outcome of the operation of the free market. They are on the contrary the result of well-intentioned but ill-advised government interference with the market.
Ludwig von MisesEach epoch has found in the Gospels what it sought to find there, and has overlooked what it wished to overlook.
Ludwig von MisesThe 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.
Ludwig von MisesThere is no means by which anyone can evade his personal responsibility. Whoever neglects to examine to the best of his abilities all the problems involved voluntarily surrenders his birthright to a selfappointed elite of supermen. In such vital matters blind reliance upon 'experts' and uncritical acceptance of popular catchwords and prejudices is tantamount to the abandonment of self-determination and to yielding to other people's domination. As conditions are today, nothing can be more important to every intelligent man than economics. His own fate and that of his progeny are at stake.
Ludwig von Mises