Ludwig von Mises Quotes

I think we need to think of capitalism as a very bad way of organizing communism. Much of what we do is already communism, so just expand it.

Socialism, in the traditional sense, meant government ownership and operation of the means of production. Outside of North Korea and a couple of other spots, no one in the world today would define socialism that way. That will never come back.

Socialism without public ownership is nothing but a fantastic apology.

A society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not choose between two social systems; it chooses between social cooperation and the disintegration of society. Socialism is not an alternative to capitalism; it is an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings.

Just as feudalism was an advance over slavery, and capitalism was the next step after feudalism, socialism is the next step after capitalism...........Socialism in America will come through the ballot box.

Capitalism is using its money; we socialists throw it away.

Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man. Well socialism is exactly the reverse.

Communists are frustrated capitalists.

Socialism and capitalism are both essentially materialist, just different ways of approaching the lifeless world of matter and deciding how to share the spoils.

[I]n communism, you'd threaten a dog into compliance, while in capitalism, obedience is obtained through bribes.

The essential notion of a capitalist society ... is voluntary cooperation, voluntary exchange. The essential notion of a socialist society is force.

Capitalism and socialism are two distinct patterns of social organization. Private control of the means of production and public control are contradictory notions and not merely contrary notions. There is no such thing as a mixed economy, a system that would stand midway between capitalism and socialism.

Less than seventy-five years after it officially began, the contest between capitalism and socialism is over: capitalism has won.

I am a socialist in ideology, a capitalist in methodology.

We don't live in a capitalist totality. Capitalism couldn't survive as a totality anyway. We live in this complex system and we already live communism and anarchism in a million forms everyday.

Capitalism is the way of the devil and exploitation. If you really want to look at things through the eyes of Jesus Christ -- who I think was the first socialist -- only socialism can really create a genuine society.

Everyday I become more convinced, there is no doubt in my mind, and as many intellectuals have said, that it is necessary to transcend capitalism. But capitalism can't be transcended from with capitalism itself, but through socialism, true socialism, with equality and justice. I'm also convinced that it is possible to do it under democracy, but not in the type of democracy being imposed by Washington.

Capitalism works better than it sounds, while socialism sounds better than it works.

The word "Capitalism" expresses, for our age, the sum of all evil. Even the opponents of Socialism are dominated by socialist ideas.

Capitalism is at least tolerable, which cannot be said of Socialism or Communism.

In socialism, private property is anathema, and equal distribution of income the first consideration. In capitalism, private property is cardinal, and distribution left to ensue from the play of free contract and selfish interest on that basis, no matter what anomalies it may present.

Socialism has several aspects. Economically, it means the socialization of the means of production; politically, the establishment of the dictatorship of the toiling masses; emotionally, the abolition of the reign of egotism and anarchy which characterizes the capitalistic system.

If experts were usually right, socialism would prevail.

Ownership of the means of production was an obsession to be abandoned. What mattered was the state’s control over the economy.

Socialism and freedom are not compatible, regardless of repeated convincings.