Ludwig von Mises

"Among Mises’s greatest personal attributes was courage. He had the force of will and character to maintain a position that he thought true even if almost no one else did."

"While it is possible to imagine Mises without Hayek, it is not possible to imagine Hayek without Mises."

"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."

"The market, even more than the wheel, is one of the great commonplace servants of man. Professor Mises powerfully defends it against those who would subvert it to the service of selfish or shortsighted ends. But it is possible that the defense is stronger when in the hands of somewhat more moderate men. One is also bound to be puzzled over who is to vote in and support the economic and political order that Professor Mises demands. He is a vigorous foe of autocrats and dictators but he also has little respect for people at large. Defending advertising, to choose one example among many, he observes: "Like all things designed to suit the taste of the masses, it is repellent to people of delicate feeling." I wouldn't suppose that the people of delicate feeling are yet in the strength to take over."

"As readers will remember, Mises in his famous socialist calculation argument proved that a fully socialist economy would collapse into chaos. If this is right, how can ostensibly socialist economies such as Soviet Russia exist? In answer, Mises said that these economies weren’t fully socialist. They allowed scope for private enterprise, albeit of a limited sort. Mises’s point applies to the German form of socialism as well as the Russian."

"There is no single man to whom I owe more intellectually, even though he [Mises] was never my teacher in the institutional sense of the word."

"Though I learned that he [Mises] usually was right in his conclusions, I wasn't always satisfied by his arguments, and retained to the end a certain critical attitude which sometimes forced me to build different constructions, which however, to my great pleasure, usually led to the same conclusions. I am to the present moment pursuing the questions which he made me see, and that, I believe is the greatest benefit one scientist can confer on one of the next generation."

"...there I came to know him (Mises) mainly as a tremendously efficient executive, the kind of man who, as was said of John Stuart Mill, because he does a normal day's work in two hours, always has a clear desk and time to talk about anything. I came to know him as one of the best educated and informed men I have ever known..."

"I probably was ... when I began my study, called the Fabian kind of approach and convinced that there must be intelligent solution of the many dissatisfactory events of this world. And so it was as a mild socialist, that I decided I must study economics. I was very soon 'cured' of these beliefs that socialism was the solution because I came after three years, and as a direct influence of Ludwig von Mises, who had then published his great book on Socialism demonstrating that the socialist solution was impossible in a technical sense."

"Solange es Schutzzölle und Wanderungsverbote, Zwangsschulen und Zwangsunterricht, Interventionismus und Etatismus gibt, werden immer wieder Konflikte entstehen, die zu kriegerischen Verwicklungen führen."

"Eine repräsentative Demokratie kann nicht bestehen, wenn ein großer Teil der Wähler auf der öffentlichen Gehaltsliste steht. Wenn die Parlamentarier sich nicht mehr als Treuhänder der Steuerzahler ansehen, sondern als Vertreter der Empfänger von Gehältern, Löhnen, Subventionen, Arbeitslosenunterstützung und anderen Wohltaten aus dem Steuertopf, dann ist es um die Demokratie geschehen."

"Der Staatsapparat ist ein Zwangs- und Unterdrückungsapparat. Das Wesen der Staatstätigkeit ist, Menschen durch Gewaltanwendung oder Gewaltandrohung zu zwingen, sich anders zu verhalten, als sie sich aus freiem Antriebe verhalten würden."

"Ein freier Mensch muß es ertragen können, daß seine Mitmenschen anders handeln und anders leben, als er es für richtig hält, und muß sich abgewöhnen, sobald ihm etwas nicht gefällt, nach der Polizei zu rufen."