Mises

Via MisesBlog: Bettina Bien Greaves wrote about "Mises's New York University Seminar (1948-1969)" and included some quotations she recorded over the years:

"What do people mean," Mises asked, "when they speak of measuring 'economic growth'? People would think it foolish to try to 'measure' love. But when they try to measure economic conditions they are in effect trying to measure 'love,' the 'love' or preferences people have for certain conditions and certain changes. The idea of economic measurement denies the distinction between human action and what takes place in the physical world outside of man."

[...] Mises's extemporaneous remarks were often vivid, colorful and succinct. Here are a few gems selected from my years of seminar notes:

*You say the secret is in selling something above cost. But the situation is really very different.The problem is to produce something for which consumers are willing to pay above cost.

*Education can only hand down what was present in the old generation. The innovator cannot be educated. There is no school for the inventor.

*Prices are like the snows of last winter. They come, but at the moment we catch them, they are already something of the past.

*Concerning statistical averages which conceal the truly significant factors: If a man has one leg on an iceberg and the other in a fire, the average is then all right.

*Ideas are called "imported and alien" when one doesn't like them. It is exactly the opposite with wine.

*Beginning with Omar Khayyam, wine has been advertised by the poets. Were the poets in the pay of the "Whiskey Trust"? Why not say that the desire for cleanliness is the result of the "Soap Trust" and its advertising?

*Concerning the idea of nationality: St. Francis of Assisi and Casanova were both Italians. But what did they have in common? Only the fact that they both used the same language, though for very different purposes!

*Why should the members of Congress be so nasty as to fix a minimum wage lower than their own?