Ludwig von Mises Quotes

Law, without force, is impotent.

Even when the State does good things, it finally rests on a club, a gun, or a prison, for its power to carry them through.

The state is force incarnate, its essence is command and compulsion.

It is one thing to persuade, another to command; one thing to press with arguments, another with penalties.

Force is legitimate where gentleness avails not.

They have the ability to take a person's freedom from them. On certain situations, they have the ability to take a person's reputation. And under certain circumstances, they have the authority to take a person's life.

A law is not a law without coercion behind it.

I was the law and order.

All governments, without exception, are stable only insofar as they can effectively reward and punish.

Laws do not persuade just because they threaten.

The people may be made to follow a path of action, but they may not be made to understand it.

Coercion is the basis of every law in the universe.

Reward and punishment are the twin instruments of power in the State; they must not be revealed to anyone.

In all governments, there must of necessity be both the law and the sword; laws without arms would give us not liberty, but licentiousness; and arms without laws, would produce not subjection, but slavery. The law, therefore, should be unto the sword what the handle is to the hatchet; it should direct the stroke and temper the force.

He makes a great mistake... who supposes that authority is firmer or better established when it is founded by force than that which is welded by affection.

Power never turns power down, ever, unless institutionally demanded.

On a royal birthday every house must fly a flag, or the owner would be dragged to a police station and be fined twenty-five rubles.

Inasmuch as society cannot go on without discipline of some kind, men were constrained, in the absence of any other form of discipline, to turn to discipline of the military type.

One of the main ways that leadership stays in power is by, in various ways, convincing people that they should just let those who are in government govern: 'Trust us. Trust me. Just let us take care of things. Stay out of it.' Your opinions don't really matter. You are isolated. You are insignificant.

The power which establishes a state is violence; the power which maintains it is violence; the power which eventually overthrows it is violence.

Do not have any doubt that I will apply the law over whoever is responsible for not complying with the law.

Unless we are prepared to use frequent force, we must put up with things being done…that the majority of people in this country do not approve.

Your foreman or supervisor gives you more or-else orders in a week than the police do in a decade.

Law has the power to compel: indeed, the ability to enforce is a condition of the ability to command.

One of the damnable unhappy conditions of life is sometimes Government has to make people be civil.