Ludwig von Mises Quotes

The distinctions separating the social classes are false, in the last analysis they rest on force.

The ruling ideas of each age have always been the ideas of the ruling class.

The distribution of wealth ... depends on the laws and customs of society ... what the opinions and feelings of the ruling class make them, and are very different in different ages and countries; and might be still more different, if mankind so chose.

The class struggle, to which Marx has specially drawn attention, is a real factor, the tokens of which are to be found on every page of history. But the struggle is not confined only to two classes: the proletariat and the capitalist; it occurs between an infinite number of groups with different interests, and above all between the elites contending for power. The existence of these groups may vary in duration, they may be based on permanent or more or less temporary characteristics. In the most savage peoples, and perhaps in all, sex determines two of these groups.

This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and powerful, and to despise or, at least, neglect persons of poor and mean conditions, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.

Our nation’s political spectrum is not left to right, but top to bottom. People can locate themselves on this rich-to-poor pole for this is not a theoretical positioning: It’s based on our actual experience with money and power.

I do have strong feelings about the aristocracy: they serve a purpose, but it's a sort of insular strand of society.

America is about class. To pretend that it isn't is very ignorant. No society has ever existed without some kind of a ruling class.

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.

The stage of the development of the productive forces determines the political and ideological superstructure of society which are crystallized into a system of social organization.

The individual mirrors in his individuation the preordained social laws of exploitation, however mediated.

The ruling class is and will continue to be the class of decision makers.

There isn't much discussion of ruling class in America even in Boston, probably one of the most class-conscious cities in the country?

In 1750, 75 percent of people on the planet worked to support the top 25 percent.

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.

Is the great working class oppressed? Yes, undoubtedly it is. God has intended the great to be great and the little to be little.

Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for suppressing another.

America is like a melting pot. The people at the bottom get burned, and the scum floats to the top.

There shall not be intermarriage between plebeians and patricians

A city in which the nobles obtain their desire, is nothing else but a company of masters and slaves ordered to the satisfaction of the avarice and dishonest wishes of the ruling class.

Farming helped bring another curse upon humanity: deep class divisions. Hunter-gatherers have little or no stored food, and no concentrated food sources, like an orchard or a herd of cows: they live off the wild plants and animals they obtain each day. Therefore, there can be no kings, no class of social parasites who grow fat on food seized from others. Only in a farming population could a healthy, non-producing élite set itself above the disease-ridden masses.

The higher classes constitute the mind of the single large whole of humanity; the lower classes constitute its limbs;

The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colors breaking through.

…to make a commonwealth is to divide it into parties, which setteth them at perpetual variance, the one party endeavouring to preserve their eminence and inequality, and the other to attain their equality.

…in every city are found two diverse humors, and this arises from the fact that the common people desire neither to be commanded nor oppressed by the great, and the powerful men desire to command and oppress the people..