Ludwig von Mises Quotes

Capitalism or market economy is that system of social cooperation and division of labor that is based on private ownership of the means of production.

The market economy is the social system of the division of labor under private ownership of the means of production. Everybody acts on his own behalf; but everybodys actions aim at the satisfaction of other peoples needs as well as at the satisfaction of his own. Everybody in acting serves his fellow citizens.

The European model is, first, a social and economic system founded on the role of the market, for no computer in the world can process information better than the market.

I prefer leaving things to the market as much as possible.

The essential quality of a market system is not that it promotes greed, but that it renders greed harmless.

With free market and free man, if you remove one of them, it is not called capitalism in my dictionary.

Let’s begin with capitalism, a word that has gone largely out of fashion. The approved reference now is to the market system. This shift minimizes - indeed, deletes - the role of wealth in the economic and social system. And it sheds the adverse connotation going back to Marx. Instead of the owners of capital or their attendants in control, we have the admirably impersonal role of market forces. It would be hard to think of a change in terminology more in the interest of those to whom money accords power. They have now a functional anonymity.

The market economy-capitalism-is a social system of consumers' supremacy.

Free-market capitalism is a network of free and voluntary exchanges in which producers work, produce, and exchange their products for the products of others through prices voluntarily arrived at.

We are so accustomed to the miracle of private enterprise that we habitually take it for granted. But how does private industry solve the incredibly complex problem of turning out tens of thousands of different goods and services in the proportions in which they are wanted by the public? ... It solves these problems through the institutions of private property, competition, the free market, and the existence of money - through the interrelations of supply and demand, costs and prices, profits and losses.

The only way that has ever been discovered to have a lot of people cooperate together voluntarily is through the free market. And that's why it's so essential to preserving individual freedom.

I do believe in the free market.

The greatness of America is capitalism, free market capitalism. The exceptionalism of American business.

East and West, most societies have come to believe that competition will produce more prosperity for more people than a planned economy. I share that belief.

I'm a capitalist by conviction and profession. I believe the best economic system is one that rewards entrepreneurship and risk-taking, maximizes customer choice, uses markets to allocate scarce resources and minimizes the regulatory burden on business.

Voluntary association produces the free market - where each person can choose among a multitude of possibilities.

The historical debate is over. The answer is free-market capitalism.

Capitalism invariably boils down to barter between two willing parties, neither of whom uses force to work with the other.

What we want is to establish the rules of a market economy - not to plan its outcome.

Free prices are the price of freedom.

I’m a big fan of the free market system but the free market system works [only] when you have robust competition.

There has been no country with a democratic political sphere, past or present, whose economy has not been dominated by private ownership and market coordination.

I believe in markets before mandates.

A market economy is to economics what democracy is to government: a decent, if flawed choice, about many bad alternatives

I believe in the free enterprise system.