Ludwig von Mises Quotes

The shortest way to ruin a country is to give power to demogogues.

Every one of the world's dictatorships can and does claim to be acting in the name of the people.

Dictators cause the world's worst problems: all the collapsed states, and all the devastated economies. All the vapid cases of corruption, grand theft, and naked plunder of the treasury are caused by dictators, leaving in their wake trails of wanton destruction, horrendous carnage and human debris.

The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded.

History has shown that Big Government expands quickest in the immediate aftermath of a crisis - real or manufactured.

Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

Government is force, pure and simple. There's no way to sugar-coat that. And because government is force, it will attract the worst elements of society - people who want to use government to avoid having to earn their living and to avoid having to persuade others to accept their ideas voluntarily.

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.

Every kind and degree of evil of which mankind are susceptible may be inflicted on them by their government.

No state has been so plagued by its rulers as when power has fallen into the hands of some dabbler in philosophy or literary addict.

The worst government is the most moral.

When the tyranny of the state is combined with the hypocrisy of the church, you have a modern example of the twin vultures that have devoured man, and his rights, throughout the ages.

Advocating the expansion of the powers of the state is treason to mankind

Independently of its misdeeds, the mere power, — the bare existence of such a power, — is a thing irreconcilable with the nature and spirit of our institutions

There is no such thing as a just and fair method of exercising the tremendous power that interventionism puts into the hands of the legislature and the executive.

Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil.

Mr. Modi is responsible for everyone's misery, demonetisation disaster, destruction of all democratic institutions. He is creating problems for everybody: for political leaders, for media, for corporates. He is not following any democratic values.

It is intolerable that it should be in the power of one blockhead to do so much mischief.

The harshest tyranny is that which acts under the protection of legality and the banner of justice.

Government has within it a tendency to abuse its powers.

The essence of government is force, and most often that force is used to accomplish evil ends.

As government grows, freedom recedes.

History has informed us that bodies of men as well as individuals are susceptible of the spirit of tyranny.

Whether the mask is labeled fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat, our great adversary remains the apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military. Not the one facing us across the frontier of the battle lines, which is not so much our enemy as our brothers' enemy, but the one that calls itself our protector and makes us its slaves. No matter what the circumstances, the worst betrayal will always be to subordinate ourselves to this apparatus and to trample underfoot, in its service, all human values in ourselves and in others.

Politicians as a class are dangerous, that people who are seeking power over us are not, by definition, our friends.