Ludwig von Mises Quotes

To those critics who see capitalism as a system of inegalitarian, oppressive structures, its defenders have vaunted its ability to recognize and encourage what they call individual merit and asserted not only the desirability but also the inevitability of differential reward, of earned privilege, so to speak.

But if the 1 percent and the 0.1 percent are respected and allowed to risk their wealth - and new rebels are allowed to rise up and challenge them - America will continue to be the land where the last regularly become the first by serving others.

It has often been said, that there is but one rank of men in America… we have no artificial distinctions of men into noblemen and commoners among us, but it ought to be remarked, that superior degrees of industry and capacity, and above all, commerce, have introduced inequality of property among us, and these have introduced natural distinctions of rank in Pennsylvania, as certain and general as the artificial distinctions of men in Europe. This will ever be the case while commerce exists in this country.

All down history, nine-tenths of mankind have been grinding corn for the remaining one-tenth, been paid with the husks, and bidden to thank God they had the husks.

There are no great lords who possess everything and a herd of people who have nothing

I think the free-enterprise system has been great for society. That doesn't mean it's completely perfect. And also, when people say capitalism, I'm not really sure what they mean.

The rich don't exploit the poor. They just out-compete them.

I reject absolutely the idea that people should know their place, and know their class.

Class structures are a luxury that we cannot afford.

I'm not an anti-capitalist, or anarchist. I want capitalism to work.

In every commercial state, notwithstanding any pretension to equal rights, the exaltation of a few must depress the many.

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

Labor is, on the one hand, more and more furnished by a class; Property or Capital, on the other, held and controlled by another class. Here you have workers without property—the proletariat. There you have property without work—or capital…. The workers without property are excluded from their products, from the riches they create—which accumulate in the hands of the property holders, capitalists and large land-owners.

Inequality is an inevitable product of capitalist activity, and expanding equality of opportunity only increases it—because some individuals and communities are simply better able than others to exploit the opportunities for development and advancement that capitalism affords.

There is a serious tendency towards capitalism among the well-to-do peasants.

I believe in capitalism as long as there's a strong rule of law around it.

Under capitalism everybody is the architect of his own fortune.

Capitalism: Nothing so mean could be right. Greed is the ugliest of the capital sins.

We affirm that the true story of capitalism is now beginning, because capitalism is not a system of oppression only, but is also a selection of values, a coordination of hierarchies, a more amply developed sense of individual responsibility.

It would be a considerable consolation to the poor and discontented could they but see the means whereby the wealth they covet has been acquired, or the misery that it entails.

Free enterprise is the best economic system in the history of the world, because it is the only system where you can make poor people richer and you don't have to make rich people poor.

Capitalism means that a few people will do very well, and the rest will serve the few.

Such hath it been--shall be--beneath the sun The many still must labour for the one.

Capitalism cannot be reduced to one or a few features, but it does possess one relationship, central to its existence and operation, that constitutes the essence of inequality and ineradicable instability: the wage-labor-capital connection that dwells at the heart of the system.

Capitalism will continue to eliminate mass poverty in more and more places and to an increasingly marked extent if it is merely permitted to do so.