Mises Daily

History tells us that government is at heart a counterfeiter and therefore cannot be trusted to control money. This is true of both autocratic and popular government. 

Trade is nothing but the release of what one has in abundance to obtain some other thing one wants.

The violator of his property is not the maverick company that pays the bribe, but the producer who violates his contract with the sponsor by accepting it.

It was his melancholy good fortune to come upon the scene when the world went in for arms on an unprecedented scale and it was he who, more than any other man, developed the international market for arms.

Throughout history groups of men calling themselves 'the government' have attempted to gain a compulsory monopoly of the commanding heights of the economy and society.

Tulipmania—the famous bubble in tulip prices in the Dutch Republic—cannot be explained by studying the "fundamentals of the tulip market." The answer lies in manipulation of the financial sector. 

I submit that the naïfs who stubbornly refuse to examine the interplay of political and economic interest in government are tossing away an essential tool for analyzing the world in which we live.

A person cannot do right except in a situation where there is also the option of doing wrong.

It is striking to realize that dikes were not only built without the state, but also that the dike areas can be regarded as seceding territories, which came close to private-law societies.

The laws of economics are not suspended by bureaucrats' political interference, and prices do not respond to their dictates. Rather, economic chaos results.