Ludwig von Mises Quotes

Let no act be done without purpose.

Every act you have ever performed since the day you were born was performed because you wanted something.

Let us distinguish between acting intentionally and acting deliberately or on purpose, as far as this can be done by attending to what language can teach us.

Reason and action are congeneric and homogenous, two aspects of the same phenomenon.

There is in the universe something for the description and analysis of which the natural sciences cannot contribute anything. There are events beyond the range of those events that the procedures of the natural sciences are fit to observe and describe. There is human action.

Action without thought is empty. Thought without action is blind.

Action is coarsened thought; thought becomes concrete, obscure, and unconscious.

Always have a plan, and believe in it. Nothing happens by accident.

It's motive alone which gives character to the actions of men.

For imagination sets the goal picture which our automatic mechanism works on. We act, or fail to act, not because of will, as is so commonly believed, but because of imagination.

I never do anything by chance.

If you make mistakes too often people think that you are doing it deliberately.

A success is anyone who is doing deliberately a pre-determined job, because that's what he decided to do deliberately. But only one out of twenty does that.

Purposeful action is thus the goal of all that is truly educative.

Do you suppose that sacrifice is the hallmark of moral action?--Just stop to consider whether sacrifice is not involved in every action that is done with deliberation, the worst as well as the best.

All human happiness and misery take the form of action.

A theory that denies that thoughts can regulate actions does not lend itself readily to the explanation of complex human behavior.

Deliberate before you begin; but, having carefully done so, execute with vigour.

It is impossible to describe any human action if one does not refer to the meaning the actor sees in the stimulus as well as in the end his response is aiming at.

A person who is trained to consider his actions, to undertake them deliberately, is in so far forth disciplined. Add to this ability a power to endure in an intelligently chosen course in the face of distraction, confusion, and difficulty, and you have the essence of discipline.

Awareness isn't passive. It directly leads to action (or inaction).

And I don't like doing silly things (except on purpose).

Positive human action is not only possible, but pervasive; human beings can improve and choose light and so on. And this is all happening.

I want to make sure that what I do has specific purpose and is not just throwing a dart at something to keep busy.

One's action ought to come out of an achieved stillness: not to be a mere rushing on.