Ludwig von Mises

To illustrate the difference between the innovator and the dull crowd of routinists who cannot even imagine that any improvement read more

To illustrate the difference between the innovator and the dull crowd of routinists who cannot even imagine that any improvement is possible, we need only refer to a passage in Engel's most famous book. Here, in 1878, Engels apodictically announced that military weapons are "now so perfected that no further progress of any revolutionizing influence is any longer possible." Henceforth "all further [technological] progress is by and large indifferent for land warfare. The age of evolution is in this regard essentially closed." This complacent conclusion shows in what the achievement of the innovator consists: he accomplishes what other people believe to be unthinkable and unfeasible.

Scientific research sooner or later, but inevitably, encounters something ultimately given that it cannot trace back to something else of read more

Scientific research sooner or later, but inevitably, encounters something ultimately given that it cannot trace back to something else of which it would appear as the regular or necessary derivative. Scientific progress consists in pushing further back this ultimately given.

Value is not intrinsic; it is not in things. It is within us; it is the way in which man read more

Value is not intrinsic; it is not in things. It is within us; it is the way in which man reacts to the conditions of his environment.

What matters is not the allocation of portions out of a fund presented to man by nature. The problem is read more

What matters is not the allocation of portions out of a fund presented to man by nature. The problem is rather to further those social institutions which enable people to continue and to enlarge the production of all those things which they need.

Society is only possible on these terms, that the individual finds therein a strengthening of his own ego and his read more

Society is only possible on these terms, that the individual finds therein a strengthening of his own ego and his own will.