The characteristic mark of this age of dictators, wars and revolutions is its anticapitalistic bias. Most governments and political parties were eager to restrict the sphere of private initiative and free enterprise.
Ludwig von MisesThere is no such thing as a just and fair method of exercising the tremendous power that interventionism puts into the hands of the legislature and the executive.
Ludwig von MisesEducation rears disciples, imitators, and routinists, not pioneers of new ideas and creative geniuses. The schools are not nurseries of progress and improvement, but conservatories of tradition and unvarying modes of thought.
Ludwig von MisesMan is not, like the animals, an obsequious puppet of instincts and sensual impulses. Man has the power to suppress instinctive desires, he has a will of his own, he chooses between incompatible ends.
Ludwig von MisesWelfare policies never attain those - allegedly beneficial - ends which the government and the self-styled progressives who advocated them wanted to attain, but - on the contrary - bring about a state of affairs which - from the very point of view of the government and its supporters - is even more unsatisfactory than the previous state of affairs they wanted to 'improve.'
Ludwig von MisesOnly stilted pedants can conceive the idea that there are absolute norms to tell what is beautiful and what is not. They try to derive from the works of the past a code of rules with which, as they fancy, the writers and artists of the future should comply. But the genius does not cooperate with the pundit.
Ludwig von Mises