Ludwig von Mises Quotes

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.

History offers us vicarious experience. It allows the youngest student to possess the ground equally with his elders; without a knowledge of history to give him a context for present events, he is at the mercy of every social misdiagnosis handed to him.

The more extensive a man's knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do.

If you read enough biography and history, you learn how people have dealt successfully or unsuccessfully with similar situations or patterns in the past. It doesn't give you a template of answers, but it does help you refine the questions you have to ask yourself.

The wise form right judgment of the present from what is past.

The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.

Experts often possess more data than judgment.

I actually don't think that I'm that much smarter than anybody else. It's just that I frequently just seem to know what to do, and I think that's wisdom.

Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.

My errors will point to thinking men the various roads, and will teach them the great art of treading on the brink of the precipice without falling into it.

Common sense is the measure of the possible; it is composed of experience and prevision; it is calculation applied to life.

You learn from a conglomeration of the incredible past - whatever experience gotten in any way whatsoever.

An expert is someone who knows a lot about the past.

I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future.

Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground-floor. But if a man hasn't got plenty of good common sense, the more science he has, the worse for his patient.

The experience gathered from books, though often valuable, is but the nature of learning; whereas the experience gained from actual life is one of the nature of wisdom.

I think you can learn from history.

I'm not a genius. I'm just a tremendous bundle of experience.

My whole life, I had been taught to read and study, to seek understanding in knowledge of history, of cultures.

Observation more than books and experience more than persons, are the prime educators.

Smarter is always the answer.

Experience is easy to provide and quickly put to good use by people with all the other qualities.

Kerry is an adult - he thinks things through. He learns from the present as well as the past. To George Bush, thinking things through is for sissies.

History is Philosophy teaching by example.

Whether it's in the right way or sometimes the wrong way, you learn about life and its lessons.