Individualism

On the market it is not mankind, the state, or the corporative unit that acts, but individual men and groups of men, and that their valuations and their actions are decisive, not those of abstract collectives. . . . This discovery signaled nothing less than a Copernican revolution in social science.

Austrian Economics: An Anthology, p. 125

In the history of the last two hundred years we can discern . . . the trend toward freedom, the rights of man, and self-determination. This individualism resulted in the fall of autocratic government, the establishment of democracy, the evolution of capitalism, technical improvements, and an unprecedented rise in standards of living. It substituted enlightenment for old superstitions, scientific methods of research for inveterate prejudices. It was an epoch of great artistic and literary achievements, the age of immortal musicians, painters, writers, and philosophers. And it brushed away slavery, serfdom, torture, inquisition, and other remnants of the dark ages.

Omnipotent Government, p. 8

The philosophy that is the characteristic mark of the West and whose consistent elaboration has in the last centuries transformed all social institutions has been called individualism. It maintains that ideas, the good ones as well as the bad, originate in the mind of an individual man.

Theory and History, p. 37