Economics

Economics is not about goods and services; it is about human choice and action.

Human Action, p. 491; p. 494

Economics deals with real man, weak and subject to error as he is, not with ideal beings, omniscient and perfect as only gods could be.

Human Action, p. 97; p. 97

Economics must not be relegated to classrooms and statistical offices and must not be left to esoteric circles. It is the philosophy of human life and action and concerns everybody and everything. It is the pith of civilization and of man’s human existence.

Human Action, p. 874; p. 878

The economist must never be a specialist. In dealing with any problem he must always fix his glance upon the whole system.

Austrian Economics: An Anthology, p. 157

Despots and democratic majorities are drunk with power. They must reluctantly admit that they are subject to the laws of nature. But they reject the very notion of economic law . . . economic history is a long record of government policies that failed because they were designed with a bold disregard for the laws of economics.

Austrian Economics: An Anthology, p. 155

Economics as such is a challenge to the conceit of those in power. An economist can never be a favorite of autocrats and demagogues. With them he is always the mischief-maker, and the more they are inwardly convinced that his objections are well founded, the more they hate him.

Austrian Economics: An Anthology, p. 155

There is economics and there is economic history. The two must never be confused.

Austrian Economics: An Anthology p. 155

The unpopularity of economics is the result of its analysis of the effects of privileges. It is impossible to invalidate the economists’ demonstration that all privileges hurt the interests of the rest of the nation or at least a great part of it.

Austrian Economics: An Anthology, p. 58

The social function of economic science consists precisely in developing sound economic theories and in exploding the fallacies of vicious reasoning. In the pursuit of this task the economist incurs the deadly enmity of all mountebanks and charlatans whose shortcuts to an earthly paradise he debunks.

Economic Freedom and Interventionism, pp. 51–52

All those not familiar with economics (i.e., the immense majority) do not see any reason why they should not coerce other people by means of force to do what these people are not prepared to do of their own accord.

Austrian Economics: An Anthology, p. 75

The main achievement of economics is that it has provided a theory of peaceful human cooperation. This is why the harbingers of violent conflict have branded it as a “dismal science” and why this age of wars, civil wars, and destruction has no use for it.

Economic Freedom and Interventionism, p. 235

No very deep knowledge of economics is usually needed for grasping the immediate effects of a measure; but the task of economics is to foretell the remoter effects, and so to allow us to avoid such acts as attempt to remedy a present ill by sowing the seeds of a much greater ill for the future.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 23

This dilettantish inability to comprehend the essential issues of the conduct of production affairs is not only manifested in the writings of Marx and Engels. It permeates no less the contributions of contemporary pseudo-economics.

Planning for Freedom, p. 147

But for a few dozen individuals all over the globe are cognizant of economics, and no statesman or politician cares about it.

A Critique of Interventionism, p. 106

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.

Human Action, p. 756; p. 762

The development of a profession of economists is an offshoot of interventionism. The professional economist is the specialist who is instrumental in designing various measures of government interference with business. He is an expert in the field of economic legislation, which today invariably aims at hindering the operation of the market economy.

Human Action, p. 865; p. 869

As conditions are today, nothing can be more important to every intelligent man than economics. His own fate and that of his progeny is at stake.

Human Action, p. 875; p. 878

Whether we like it or not, it is a fact that economics cannot remain an esoteric branch of knowledge accessible only to small groups of scholars and specialists. Economics deals with society’s fundamental problems; it concerns everyone and belongs to all. It is the main and proper study of every citizen.

Human Action, p. 875; p. 879

The study of economics has been again and again led astray by the vain idea that economics must proceed according to the pattern of other sciences.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 3

Economics is not specifically about business; it deals with all market phenomena and with all their aspects, not only with the activities of a businessman.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 77

Everything that we say about action is independent of the motives that cause it and of the goals toward which it strives in the individual case. It makes no difference whether action springs from altruistic or from egoistic motives, from a noble or from a base disposition; whether it is directed toward the attainment of materialistic or idealistic ends; whether it arises from exhaustive and painstaking deliberation or follows fleeting impulses and passions.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 34

Only by letting fall morsels of statistics is it possible for the economic theorist to maintain his prestige.

The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 216

People may disagree on the question of whether everybody ought to study economics seriously. But one thing is certain. A man who publicly talks or writes about the opposition between capitalism and socialism without having fully familiarized himself with all that economics has to say about these issues is an irresponsible babbler.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, p. 47

In all ages the pioneer in scientific thought has been a solitary thinker. But never has the position of the scientist been more solitary than in the field of modern economics. The fate of mankind—progress on the road that western civilization has taken for thousands of years, or a rapid plunge into a chaos from which there is no way out, from which no new life as we know it will ever develop—depends on whether this condition persists.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, p. 202

The body of economic knowledge is an essential element in the structure of human civilization; it is the foundation upon which modern industrialism and all the moral, intellectual, technological, and therapeutical achievements of the last centuries have been built.

Human Action, p. 885