Ludwig von Mises Quotes

Rather than being any longer a threat to the established … order, Christianity became what practically all this earth's religions, launched in the name of spiritual enlightenment and freedom, have also become: a powerful way of perpetuating that order.

Priesthoods were invented in order to provide the commoners and slaves with a theory of the world, so that they could accept society as it was. This theory explained that social inequalities were intrinsically good and necessary.

If religion is still being taught, it is by no means because its ideas still convince us, but simply because some of us want to keep the lower classes quiet. Quiet people are much easier to govern than clamorous and dissatisfied ones. They are also much easier to exploit..

The priesthood has in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning.

All oppressing classes of every description need two social functions to safeguard their domination: the function of a hangman and the function of a priest. The hangman is to quell the protest ... the priest reconciles them to class domination, weans them away from revolutionary actions.

Everything changes.... Social life changes, and with it the "national question" changes, too. At different periods different classes enter the arena, and each class has its own view of the "national question." Consequently, in different periods the "national question" serves different interests and assumes different shades, according to which class raises it, and when.

We also know that religion, as the Marxists have always insisted, has, too often, like an opiate, tended to put people to sleep to the reality and the need for the present struggle for peace and justice.

Social stability is ensured, not by the cessation of the demand for change – for the needy and the restless will never cease to cry for it – but by the fact that change in its progress must at last hurt some class of men who are strong enough to arrest it.

The prince and the peasant will not be equalized by cutting off the prince's head.

That's the choice they allow you - now the outlet is being a pop star, which is really what I'm saying on the album in 'Working class hero'. As I told Rolling Stone, it's the same people who have the power, the class system didn't change one little bit.

The ruling class is smarter than you, and they're more creative. And if you forget that lesson, you go down the drain. Because if they weren't, they wouldn't be around as long as they have been and as strong as they have been.

When Religion and Royalty are swept away, the people will attack the great, and after the great, they will fall upon the rich.

In the Europe which was created by the Second World War, divided into two blocks, each in need of a revolution that would end the abuses and injustices of capitalism and the privileges of a bureaucratic caste, collective faith does not exist.

Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.

For most of human history, there was a ruling class and then there was everybody else. If you were part of everybody else, it wasn't your job to imagine a different future, different ways of doing things. So, imagination is a fairly modern phenomenon.

The conservatives say they are protecting the values of society. They are protecting their privileges.

Women are now in the situation of the mass of mankind a few years since, when science and learning were in the hands of priests, and property was held by vassalage.

In all ages hypocrites, called priests, have put crowns on the heads of thieves, called kings.

Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor.

In a county where power is in the hands of the local tyrants and evil gentry, the magistrate, whoever he may be, is almost invariably a corrupt official. In a county where the peasants have risen there is clean government, whoever the magistrate.

The history of the Roman Empire is also the history of the uprising of the Empire of the Masses, who absorb and annul the directing minorities and put themselves in their place.

Traditional autocrats leave in place existing allocations of wealth, power, status, and other re-sources which in most traditional societies favor an affluent few and maintain masses in poverty. But they worship traditional gods and observe traditional taboos. They do not disturb the habitual rhythms of work and leisure, habitual places of residence, habitual patterns of family and personal relations.

… the Church, whose natural interests allied it more to the great than to the meek …

No true and perfect human society can be conceived which is not governed by some supreme authority…. Do the sheep when they are all assembled together rule and guide the shepherd?

Religions are manipulated in order to serve those who govern society and not the other way around.