Ludwig von Mises Intellectual Quotations

The flowering of human society depends on two factors: the intellectual power of outstanding men to conceive sound social and economic theories, and the ability of these or other men to make these ideologies palatable to the majority.

We do not assert that the capitalist mode of economic calculation guarantees the absolutely best solution of the allocation of factors of production. Such absolutely perfect solutions of any problem are out of reach of mortal men. What the operation of a market not sabotaged by the interference of compulsion and coercion can bring about is merely the best solution accessible to the human mind under the given state of technological knowledge and the intellectual abilities of the age's shrewdest men.

The truth is that most people lack the intellectual ability and courage to resist a popular movement, however pernicious and ill-considered.

Production is not something physical, material, and external; it is a spiritual and intellectual phenomenon.

Economic prosperity is not so much a material problem; it is, first of all, an intellectual, spiritual, and moral problem.