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"That the social life of human beings is subject to definite limitations; that it is governed by a set of laws that are comparable with those of Nature; these are notions that are unknown to the etatist. For the etatist, everything is a question of Macht - power, force, might. And his conception of Macht is crudely materialistic."
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"If a politician obtained a great wealth after he has been elected, his being an immoral corrupt man is not a possibility but it is a self-evident reality!"

"If a country is not governed well, all sort of disasters will become a routine of that country!"

"Some politicians are much noisier than the dogs! Just like teaching a dog how to hush, public must likewise teach those politicians to shush!"

"Is your country under great dangers? Light is gone and the darkness is everywhere? You don't know whom to trust and what to do? Read the history of your country! There you will find out the best map for the way out!"

"Here is a tragicomic reality of all the regimes: People work hard to feed their thief politicians, their thief kings and thief queens or their thief presidents! And therefore the tragicomic reality of all the times is this: There can exist no thieves without the support of people!"
Explore more quotes by Ludwig von Mises

"That policy which aims at raising the objective exchange-value of money is called, after the most important means at its disposal, restrictionism or deflationism. This nomenclature does not really embrace all the policies that aim at an increase in the value of money. The aim of restrictionism may also be attained by not increasing the quantity of money when the demand for it increases, or by not increasing it enough. This method has quite often been adopted as a way of increasing the value of money in face of the problems of a depreciated credit-money standard."

"It has been proposed that monetary liabilities should be settled in terms of gold and not according to their nominal amount. If this proposal were adopted, for each mark that had been borrowed that sum would have to be repaid that could at the time of repayment buy the same weight of gold as one mark could at the time when the debt contract was entered into. The fact that such proposals are now put forward and meet with approval shows that etatism has already lost its hold on the monetary system and that inflationary policies are inevitably approaching their end. Even only a few years ago, such a proposal would either have been ridiculed or else branded as high treason."

"The agents of etatism have certainly not been lacking in zeal and energy. But, for all this, economic affairs cannot be kept going by magistrates and policemen."

"The State does not govern the market; in the market in which products are exchanged it may quite possibly be a powerful party, but nevertheless it is only one party of many, nothing more than that. All its attempts to transform the exchange-ratios between economic goods that are determined in the market can only be undertaken with the instruments of the market."

"A variation in the objective exchange-value of money can arise only when a force is exerted in one direction that is not cancelled by a counteracting force in the opposite direction. If the causes that alter the ratio between the stock of money and the demand for it from the point of view of an individual consist merely in accidental and personal factors that concern that particular individual only, then, according to the law of large numbers, it is likely that the forces arising from this cause, and acting in both directions in the market, will counterbalance each other."

"The error in this conclusion may be most simply demonstrated by means of an actual example. Let us select for this purpose the monetary history of Austria, which Laughlin also uses as an illustration. From 1859 onwards the Austrian National Bank was released from the obligation to convert its notes on demand into silver, and nobody could tell when the State paper-money issued in 1866 would be redeemed, or even if it would be redeemed at all. It was not until the later 'nineties that the transition to metallic money was completed by the actual resumption of cash payments on the part of the Austro-Hungarian Bank."

"The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau."

"If one prevents a man from working for the good of society while at the same time providing for the satisfaction of his own needs, then only one way remains open to him: to make himself richer and others poorer by the violent oppression and spoliation of his fellow men."

"For hundreds, even thousands, of years, people completely failed to see that variations in the objective exchange-value of money could be induced by monetary factors. They tried to explain all variations of prices exclusively from the commodity side."
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