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Quotes by Austrian Authors
"For the etatist, money is a creature of the State, and the esteem in which money is held is the economic expression of the respect or prestige enjoyed by the State. The more powerful and the richer the State, the better its money. Thus, during the War, it was asserted that 'the monetary standard of the victors' would ultimately be the best money. Yet victory and defeat on the battlefield can exercise only an indirect influence on the value of money."
"After the advent of the written word, the masses who could not - or were not permitted to - read, were given sermons by the few who could."
"Thing, body, matter, are nothing apart from the combinations of the elements, - the colours, sounds, and so forth - nothing apart from their so-called attributes."
"It is so characteristic, that just when the mechanics of reproduction are so vastly improved, there are fewer and fewer people who know how the music should be played."
"Circumstances made me the theatrical personality I am, which many people believe is also a part of my personal life."
"If our dreams were more regular, more connected, more stable, they would also have more practical importance for us."
"I am so miserable, there are so many questions, I can see no way out and am so wretched and feeble that I could lie forever on the sofa and keep opening and closing my eyes without knowing the difference."
"Similarly, many a young man, hearing for the first time of the refraction of stellar light, has thought that doubt was cast on the whole of astronomy, whereas nothing is required but an easily effected and unimportant correction to put everything right again."
"Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made."
"The view is often defended that sciences should be built up on clear and sharply defined basal concepts. In actual fact no science, not even the most exact, begins with such definitions. The true beginning of scientific activity consists rather in describing phenomena and then in proceeding to group, classify and correlate them."
"I never force myself to be devout except when I feel so inspired, and never compose hymns of prayers unless I feel within me real and true devotion."
"One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful."
"Silently, God opens his golden eyes over the place of skulls."
"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."
"To recapitulate: the exchange-ratio subsisting between commodities and money is everywhere the same. But men and their wants are not everywhere the same, and neither are commodities. Only if these distinctions are ignored is it possible to speak of local differences in the purchasing power of money or to say that living is dearer in one place than in another."
"The words which we use in our everyday speech are nothing other than watered-down magic."
"Many an article that I myself penned twenty years ago impresses me now as something quite foreign to myself."
"The counterpart of the suicide is the seeker; but the difference between them is slight."
"The social function of economic science consists precisely in developing soundeconomic theories and in exploding the fallacies of vicious reasoning. In the pursuit ofthis task the economist incurs the deadly enmity of all mountebanks and charlatanswhose shortcuts to an earthly paradise he debunks. The less these quacks are able toadvance plausible objections to an economist's argument, the more furiously do theyinsult them."
"Fay has spirituality too, but she also has that very real sex appeal that takes hold of the hearts of men."
"I was a crazy young man who let himself be blinded by his passions and obeyed only the impulses of the moment."
"The science of the mind can only have for its proper goal the understanding of human nature by every human being, and through its use, brings peace to every human soul."
"It is not because I do not love my adopted land - it is the natural feeling of one far from home, who remembers those happy, carefree days when life flowed at full tide, without responsibility, flashing past one like the drama in a fascinating story of adventure and romance."
"Opposition is not necessarily enmity; it is merely misused and made an occasion for enmity."
"Analogies it is true decide nothing but they can make one feel more at home."
"As soon, however, as capitalist competition has definitively established the equal rate of profit, that rate becomes the starting point for the calculations of the capitalists in the investment of capital in newly-created branches of production."
"I received my doctorate from the University of Vienna in 1910."
"Where the currency depreciation is a result of government inflation carried out by the issue of notes, it is possible to avert its disastrous effect on economic calculation by conducting all bookkeeping in a stable money instead. But so far as the depreciation is a depreciation of gold, the world money, there is no such easy way out."
"Never let oneself be guided by the opinion of one's contemporaries. Continue steadfastly on one's way."
"As soon as I had proved this and, of course, also the normal pointing action and reactions in all other extremities and joints, I stopped the experiment."
"A stair not worn hollow by footsteps is, regarded from its own point of view, only a boring something made of wood."
"Our castle is not imposing, but is well built, and surrounded by a very fine garden. I live in the bailiff's house."
"I am married to the theater, and the films are only my mistress."
"Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone's slave."
"When a film company is in the red they come to me. Always it is the same."
"What delights us in visible beauty is the invisible."
"A confession has to be part of your new life."
"Hiding places there are innumerable, escape is only one, but possibilities of escape, again, are as many as hiding places."
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