Socialism An Economic and Sociological Analysis by Mises, Ludwig Von ( Author ) ON Jan-01-1981, Paperback Quotes

“All rational action is in the first place individual action. Only the individual thinks. Only the individual reasons. Only the individual acts.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Socialism An Economic and Sociological Analysis by Mises, Ludwig Von ( Author ) ON Jan-01-1981, Paperback

“The average man is both better informed and less corruptible in the decisions he makes as a consumer than as a voter at political elections.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis

“Society has arisen out of the works of peace; the essence of society is peacemaking. Peace and not war is the father of all things. Only economic action has created the wealth around us; labor, not the profession of arms, brings happiness. Peace builds, war destroys.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Socialism An Economic and Sociological Analysis by Mises, Ludwig Von ( Author ) ON Jan-01-1981, Paperback

“All rational action is economic. All economic activity is rational action. All rational action is in the first place individual action. Only the individual thinks. Only the individual reasons. Only the individual acts.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Socialism An Economic and Sociological Analysis by Mises, Ludwig Von ( Author ) ON Jan-01-1981, Paperback

“Since its appearance the view that prostitution is a product of capitalism has gained ground enormously. And as, in addition, preachers still complain that the good old morals have decayed, and accuse modern culture of having led to loose living, everyone is convinced that all sexual wrongs represent a symptom of decadence peculiar to our age.”
― Ludwig Von Mises, Socialism An Economic and Sociological Analysis by Mises, Ludwig Von ( Author ) ON Jan-01-1981, Paperback

“Marx and Engels never tried to refute their opponents with argument. They insulted, ridiculed, derided, slandered, and traduced them, and in the use of these methods their followers are not less expert. Their polemic is directed never against the argument of the opponent, but always against his person.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis

“True, a socialistic society could see that 1000 litres of wine were better than 800 litres. It could decide whether or not 1000 litres of wine were to be preferred to 500 litres of oil. Such a decision would involve no calculation. The will of some man would decide. But the real business of economic administration, the adaptation of means to ends only begins when such a decision is taken. And only economic calculation makes this adaptation possible. Without such assistance, in the bewildering chaos of alternative materials and processes the human mind would be at a complete loss. Whenever we had to decide between different processes or different centres of production, we would be entirely at sea.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Socialism An Economic and Sociological Analysis by Mises, Ludwig Von ( Author ) ON Jan-01-1981, Paperback

“What makes Bolshevism strong is not the Soviets' artillery and machine-guns but the fact that the whole world receives its ideas sympathetically.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis

“When we call a capitalist society a consumers' democracy we mean that the power to dispose of the means of production, which belongs to the entrepreneurs and capitalists, can only be acquired by means of the consumers' ballot, held daily in the market-place.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis

“Wherever Europeans or the descendants of European emigrants live, we see Socialism at work to-day; and in Asia it is the banner round which the antagonists of European civilization gather. If the intellectual dominance of Socialism remains unshaken, then in a short time the whole co-operative system of culture which Europe has built up during thousands of years will be shattered. For a socialist order of society is unrealizable. All efforts to realize Socialism lead only to the destruction of society. Factories, mines, and railways will come to a standstill, towns will be deserted. The population of the industrial territories will die out or migrate elsewhere. The farmer will return to the self-sufficiency of the closed, domestic economy. Without private ownership in the means of production there is, in the long run, no production other than a hand-to-mouth production for one's own needs.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis

“Peace builds, war destroys. Nations are fundamentally peaceful because they recognize the predominant utility of peace. They accept war only in self-defence; wars of aggression they do not desire. It is the princes who want war, because thus they hope to get money, goods, and power. It is the business of the nations to prevent them from achieving their desire by denying them the means necessary for making war.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis

“Socialism is the expression of the principle of violence crying from the workers' soul, just as Imperialism is the principle of violence speaking from the soul of the official and the soldier.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Socialism An Economic and Sociological Analysis by Mises, Ludwig Von ( Author ) ON Jan-01-1981, Paperback

“The nationalist, too, affirms Socialism, and objects only to its Internationalism. He wishes to combine Socialism with the ideas of Imperialism and the struggle against foreign nations. He is a national, not an international socialist; but he, also, approves of the essential principles of Socialism.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis

“It suffices here to say that the planned economy which the advocates of dictatorship wish to set up is precisely as socialistic as the Socialism propagated by the self-styled Social Democrats.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis

“The incomparable success of Marxism is due to the prospect it offers of fulfilling those dream-aspirations and dreams of vengeance which have been so deeply embedded in the human soul from time immemorial. It promises a Paradise on earth, a Land of Hearts' Desire full of happiness and enjoyment, and — sweeter still to the losers in life's game — humiliation of all who are stronger and better than the multitude.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis

“Liberalism has no admiration to spare for the heroic grandiosity of Marxism's professional revolutionaries, who stake the lives of thousands and destroy values which the labour of decades and centuries has created. Here the economic principle holds good: Liberalism wants success at the smallest price.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis

“It is more fun to listen to the radio speeches of a dictator than to study economic treatises. The entrepreneurs and technologists who pave the way for economic improvement work in seclusion; their work is not suitable to be visualized on the screen. But the dictators, intent upon spreading death and destruction, are spectacularly in sight of the public. Dressed in military garb they eclipse in the eyes of the movie-goers the colourless bourgeois in plain clothes. The problems of society's economic organization are not suitable for light talk at fashionable cocktail parties. Neither can they be dealt with adequately by demagogues haranguing mass assemblies. They are serious things. They require painstaking study. They must not be taken lightly.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis

“Though the man of action, the politician, may sometimes pay no attention to the results of this examination, the man of thought will never cease to inquire into all things accessible to human intelligence. And in the long run thought must determine action.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Socialism An Economic and Sociological Analysis by Mises, Ludwig Von ( Author ) ON Jan-01-1981, Paperback

“Adept as he was in the Hegelian dialectic — a system easy of abuse by those who seek to dominate thought by arbitrary flights of fancy and metaphysical verbosity — he was not slow in finding a way out of the dilemma in which socialists found themselves.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis

“But his much lauded doctrines are nothing but the fantasies of a man who was incapable of seeing clearly the world as it really is.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis

“Professor Harold Laski declared that the attainment of power by the British Labour Party in the normal parliamentary fashion must result in a radical transformation of parliamentary government. A socialist administration needs ‘guarantees’ that its work of transformation would not be ‘disrupted’ by repeal in event of its defeat at the polls. Therefore the suspension of the Constitution is ‘inevitable’.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis

“The lord of production is the consumer”
― Ludwig von Mises, Socialism An Economic and Sociological Analysis by Mises, Ludwig Von ( Author ) ON Jan-01-1981, Paperback

“People without rights are always a menace to social order. Their common interest in removing such barriers unites them; they are prepared to resort to violence because by peaceable means they are unable to get what they want. Social peace is attained only when one allows all members of society to participate in democratic institutions. And this means equality of All before the Law.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis

“Logic and reasoning, which might show the absurdity of such dreams of bliss and revenge, are to be thrust aside.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis

“The Marxist dialectic is essentially word-fetishism. Every article of the faith is embodied in a word fetish whose double or even multiple meaning makes it possible to unite incompatible ideas and demands. The interpretation of these words, as intentionally ambiguous as the words of the Delphic Pythia, eventually brings the different parties to blows, and everyone quotes in his favour passages from the writings of Marx and Engels to which authoritative importance is attached.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis

“I know only too well how hopeless it seems to convince impassioned supporters of the Socialist Idea by logical demonstration that their views are preposterous and absurd. I know too well that they do not want to hear, to see, or above all to think, and that they are open to no argument. But new generations grow up with clear eyes and open minds. And they will approach things from a disinterested, unprejudiced standpoint, they will weigh and examine, will think and act with forethought. It is for them that this book is written.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis

“The equality Liberalism creates is equality before the Law; it has never sought any other. From the liberal point of view, therefore, criticism which condemns this equality as inadequate — maintaining that true equality is full equality of income through equal distribution of commodities — is unjustified.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis

“The Bolshevists persistently tell us that religion is opium for the people. Marxism is indeed opium for those who might take to thinking and must therefore be weaned from it.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis

“Any advocate of socialistic measures is looked upon as the friend of the Good, the Noble, and the Moral, as a disinterested pioneer of necessary reforms, in short, as a man who unselfishly serves his own people and all humanity, and above all as a zealous and courageous seeker after truth. But let anyone measure Socialism by the standards of scientific reasoning, and he at once becomes a champion of the evil principle, a mercenary serving the egotistical interests of a class, a menace to the welfare of the community, an ignoramus outside the pale.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis

“The nationalist, too, affirms Socialism, and objects only to its Internationalism. He wishes to combine Socialism with the ideas of Imperialism and the struggle against foreign nations. He is a national, not an international socialist; but he, also, approves of the essential principles of Socialism.1”
― Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis