Ludwig von Mises Quotes

Where there is no market economy, the best intentioned provisions of constitutions and laws remain a dead letter.

Laissez-faire is finished. The all-powerful market that always knows best is finished.

It should not be the government running the economy.

When Government has a monopoly of all production and all distribution, as many Governments have, it can not permit any economic activity that competes with it.

Government intervention only hurts; it doesn't help.

Interventionism cannot be considered as an economic system destined to stay. It is a method for the transformation of capitalism into socialism by a series of successive steps.

There is no such thing as a free market.

While, politically, a mixed economy preserves the semblance of an organized society with a semblance of law and order, economically it is the equivalent of the chaos that had ruled China for centuries: a chaos of robber gangs looting-and draining-the productive elements of the country.

It has been a long fight to put the control of our economic system in the hands of the government.

The inefficiency of political control of an economy has been demonstrated more often, in more places, and under more varied conditions, than almost anything outside the realm of pure science.

Everything you heard about me is true. . . . I am not a free marketer. . . . I believe in the heavy hand of government.

All varieties of interference with the market phenomena not only fail to achieve the ends aimed at by their authors and supporters, but bring about a state of affairs which - from the point of view of their authors and advocates valuations - is less desirable than the previous state of affairs which they were designed to alter.

We are not smart enough to leave things to the market.

Conservatives brayed that government should stay out of the private sector; liberals bleated for nationalizing the banks.

I do not believe that the government is in any position to say exactly how every single business and every single activity shall reach those performances.

My opponents attitude is, 'If it moves, tax it, if it keeps moving, regulate it and when it stops, subsidize it.

Socialism? We've had way too much of it already.

Markets that don't work we're going to step away from.

For small businesses, you need less taxes, less federal spending, and you need less regulation that blocks their growth.

At the next General Election, voters face a clear choice: deregulation and less interference in everyday life with the Conservatives, or yet more regulation and interference under Mr Blair.

You've got Washington picking winners and losers. And so, all of a sudden, decisions are being made on what helps politicians, not what helps the economy. Some will call it socialism. Some will call it a command and control economy. Whatever it is, it's antithetical to the American experience.

The statists want to control the economy.

While I am a fervent believer in free markets and limited government, there are rare instances in which government involvement is necessary.

If you want government to take everything, if you want government to take more and more over with the banks, more of the industries, all of a sudden you're going to have a government auto czar, right there, right down the line, that's socialism.

However, leaving everything to the market is not necessarily good for society.