Ludwig von Mises Quotes

People do not cooperate under the division of labor because they love or should love one another. They cooperate because this best serves their own interests.

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.

No man will work for your interests unless they are his.

… a good society ensues from the selfish pursuits of individual men.

I believe that the human motive to share is very powerful. The human motive to profit is also very powerful, and I think that the profit motive and the sharing motive are not exclusive.

Commerce, trade and exchange make other people more valuable alive than dead, and mean that people try to anticipate what the other guy needs and wants. It engages the mechanisms of reciprocal altruism, as the evolutionary biologists call it, as opposed to raw dominance.

I definitely have a shareholders' perspective. I'm not doing that altruistically. I'm doing that because it's in my own self interest to do it. I think that's good for my other shareholders because they go along with me: If I do well for myself, then they do well for themselves.

The balance between the cooperative and altruistic tendencies and those which are disoperative and egoistic is relatively close. Under many conditions the cooperative forces lose, In the long run, however, the group centered, more altruistic drives are slightly stronger. ... human altruistic drives are as firmly based on an animal ancestry as is man himself.

I believe that people generally want to be what we call good. They want to cooperate with people. They don't want to steal; they don't want to cheat. But everybody has a price. Everybody has an incentive.

I've had teammates that are mirror guys. While they want to win, what they're really concerned about is themselves. In a win, they could be upset. In a loss, they could be happy. All that mattered was their own success. Window people, on the other hand, measure success by the contribution they make into the lives of others.

You do things for yourself, and you do things for other people, and you hope that these things coincide.

The best way of fulfilling your own interest is to take care of others.

Self-interest is hostile to the common good, but enlightened self-interest is not. And this is the best key to the meaning of enlightenment.

The hazards of the generalized prisoner's dilemma are removed by the match between the right and the good.

Anything done for another is done for oneself.

No man can live happily who regards himself alone, who turns everything to his own advantage. Thou must live for another, if thou wishest to live for thyself.

Loving behavior contributes to the group at the expense of the individual. Competition contributes to the survival of the individual at the expense of the group. In the garden of life, some people are more like flowers, and other people are more like weeds.

Nothing is properly one's duty but what is also one's interest.

If we try to secure the well-being of others, we will, at the same time, create the conditions for our own.

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow citizens.

What makes the existence and the evolution of society possible is precisely the fact that peaceful cooperation under the social division of labor in the long run best serves the selfish concerns of all individuals. The eminence of the market society is that its whole functioning and operation is the consummation of this principle.

Appropriate action means to advance your own goals, without unintentional harm to anyone else.

Selfishness is the bedrock on which all moral behavior starts and it can be immoral only when it conflicts with a higher moral imperative.

Ordinarily, everything we do is in our self-interest. Everything.

Anyone may fairly seek his own advantage, but no one has a right to do so at another's expense.