Ludwig von Mises Quotes

Independence of mind, enthusiasm, dedication to the field, and willingness to challenge and question and to explore new direction. There are plenty of people like that, but schools tend to discourage those characteristics.

The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done.

Dissidents should be paid 13 months' salary for a year, otherwise our mindless unanimity will bring us to an even more hopeless state of stagnation. It is especially important to encourage unorthodox thinking when the situation is critical: At such moments every new word and fresh thought is more precious than gold. Indeed, people must not be deprived of the right to think their own thoughts.

It is the fate of every great achievement to be pounced upon by pedants and imitators who drain it of life and turn it into an orthodoxy which stifles all stirrings of originality.

I'm a visionary. I'm not a maintenance person.

I've always been controversial because I offer new ideas. For me to be controversial, I think this is positive.

I don't live in the past or focus on making new songs sound like my old stuff; it would be stupid, and I don't think anyone would like it.

I'm often accused of being ahead of my time, but it's simply not true. The truth is that everybody else is behind.

I don't like to follow in the footsteps. I like to learn from the footsteps that came before me, forge a new path.

The antidote to stagnation is innovation.

Education, for most people, means trying to lead the child to resemble the typical adult of his society . . . but for me and no one else, education means making creators. . . . You have to make inventors, innovators...not conformists

Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement, are roads of Genius.

Every day I wake up and that’s my goal, to be on a constant quest for knowledge and do something different, being unique and being uncommon.

Innovators and creative geniuses cannot be reared in schools. They are precisely the men who defy what the school has taught them.

I don't want to repeat myself. I hate the idea of coasting and of recycling the same ideas. Then, you're just subject to the law of diminishing returns.

To use your head, you have to go out of your mind.

Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone.

The book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with some past utterance of genius. . . . They look backward and not forward. But genius looks forward: the eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates. Whatever talents may be, if the man create not, the pure efflux of the Deity is not his; - cinders and smoke there may be, but not yet flame.

Freedom is the right to question, and change the established way of doing things.…It is the understanding that allows us to recognize shortcomings and seek solutions. It is the right to put forth an idea, scoffed at by the experts, and watch it catch fire among the people. It is the right to dream-- to follow your dream, or stick to your conscience, even if you're the only one in a sea of doubters.

The man with a new idea is a crank until his idea succeeds.

You don't want to try to recreate something you've already done.

A fundamental American question is, 'What's the big idea?'

Every time you create something new, there should be questions. And to me, that's a sign that you've actually done something that is transformative.

Imagine something new, or you will only go where you have been.