The idea that political freedom can be preserved in the absence of economic freedom, and vice versa, is an illusion. Political freedom is the corollary of economic freedom.
Ludwig Von MisesRead
Rulers do not like to admit that their power is restricted by any laws other than those of physics and biology. They never ascribe their failures and frustrations to the violation of economic law.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights how leaders often ignore the limitations imposed by economic principles and prefer to blame external factors for their failures.
Ludwig Von Mises suggests that those in positions of power tend to operate under the illusion that their authority is absolute, disregarding the essential rules of economics that govern society. When faced with setbacks, these rulers avoid acknowledging the impact of economic laws, often attributing their challenges to physical or biological constraints instead, reflecting a broader tendency to evade accountability for their actions and decisions.
Themes
PowerEconomicsLawsFailureAuthority
In practice
Example use cases
A political analyst might use this quote while discussing the responsibilities of government leaders during economic downturns.
More from Ludwig Von Mises
All quotes →Wars of aggression are popular nowadays with those nations convinced that only victory and conquest could improve their material well-being.
Ludwig Von MisesRead
Only stilted pedants can conceive the idea that there are absolute norms to tell what is beautiful and what is not. They try to derive from the works of the past a code of rules with which, as they fancy, the writers and artists of the future should comply. But the genius does not cooperate with the pundit.
Ludwig Von MisesRead
The most serious dangers for American freedom and the American way of life do not come from without.
Ludwig Von MisesRead
The public firm can nowhere maintain itself in free competition with the private firm; it is possible today only where it has a monopoly that excludes competition. Even that alone is evidence of its lesser economic productivity.
Ludwig Von MisesRead
Each epoch has found in the Gospels what it sought to find there, and has overlooked what it wished to overlook.
Ludwig Von MisesRead
Similar quotes
The subway in New York is a great social experiment; there are so many races and ways of life sitting together on each car.
Jon BatisteRead
The very idea of freedom presupposes some objective moral law which overarches rulers and ruled alike...Unless we return to the crude and nursery-like belief in objective values, we perish.
C. S. LewisRead
Freedom only for supporters of the government, only for the members of one party - however numerous they may be - is no freedom at all. Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently. Not because of any fanatical concept of 'justice' but because all that is instructive, wholesome and purifying in political freedom depends on this essential characteristic, and its effectiveness vanishes when 'freedom' becomes a special privilege.
Rosa LuxemburgRead
Mom said, "His spirit is there," and that made me really angry. I told her, "Dad didn't have a spirit! He had cells!" "His memory is there." "His memory is here," I said, pointing at my head. "Dad had a spirit," she said, like she was rewinding a bit in our conversation. I told her, "He had cells, and now they're on rooftops, and in the river, and in the lungs of millions of people around New York, who breathe him every time they speak!
Jonathan Safran FoerRead
Apart from their other characteristics, the outstanding thing about China's 600 million people is that they are “poor and blank”. This may seem a bad thing, but in reality it is a good thing. Poverty gives rise to the desire for changes, the desire for action and the desire for revolution. On a blank sheet of paper free from any mark, the freshest and most beautiful characters can be written; the freshest and most beautiful pictures can be painted.
Mao ZedongRead
Rest enough for the individual man, too much and too soon, and we call it death. But for man, no rest and no ending. He must go on, conquest beyond conquest. First this little planet and all its winds and ways, and then all the laws of mind and matter that restrain him. Then the planets about him, and, at last, out across immensities to the stars. And when he has conquered all the deep space, and all the mysteries of time, still he will be beginning.
H. G. WellsRead