Mises: depressions

"True governments can reduce the rate of interest in the short run. They can issue additional paper money. They can open the way to credit expansion by the banks. They can thus create an artificial boom and the appearance of prosperity. But such a boom is bound to collapse soon or late and to bring about a depression." --Ludwig von Mises

Lane: War

"War will end when a majority of men on this earth know that every man is free. Each person must see for himself that everyone is self-controlling and responsible. So long as any large group of persons, anywhere on this earth, believe the ancient superstition that some Authority is responsible for their welfare, they will set up some image of that Authority and try to obey it. And the result will be poverty and war."

~Rose Wilder Lane

Mencken: a gang of men

"The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them."

~H. L. Mencken

@Vefessh @MartianEmpress "Happy" people of "socialist" "nations"

I might frame the issue in this way:
 Either the reportedly "happy" people of "socialist" governments, would voluntarily cooperate for the supposed social-goods as they are currently provided without the need of a "socialist" government to compel them to do so, in which case the role of the "socialist" government to compel or force those "happy" people to submit to its rules, is unnecessary, OR the "happy" people of "socialist" governments would NOT voluntarily so cooperate to provide the supposed "social-goods" *absent* the threat of force by government to compel compliance, in which case they would be happier/greater-net-satisfaction if the government did not exist.

Or more succinctly:
Either, they would voluntarily remain "socialist" in which case "their" government is unnecessary, or else they would not do so voluntarily, in which case, they would be happier/more-satisfied if the government did not exist.

Tytler: Democracy

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy."

Alexander Fraser Tytler (1747-1813)

Tolstoy: The Kingdom of God is Within you

"The good cannot seize power, nor retain it; to do this men must love power. And love of power is inconsistent with goodness; but quite consistent with the very opposite qualities—pride, cunning, cruelty.  Without the aggrandizement of self and the abasement of others, without hypocrisies and deceptions, without prisons, fortresses, executions, and murders, no power can come into existence or be maintained.  

'If the power of government is suppressed the more wicked will oppress the less wicked,' say the champions of state authority.  But when the Egyptians conquered the Jews, the Romans conquered the Greeks, and the Barbarians conquered the Romans, is it possible that all the conquerors were always better than those they conquered? And the same with the transitions of power within a state from one personage to another: has the power always passed from a worse person to a better one?  When Louis XVI. was removed and Robespierre came to power, and afterward Napoleon—who ruled then, a better man or a worse? And when were better men in power, when the Versaillist party or when the Commune was in power?  When Charles I. was ruler, or when Cromwell?  And when Peter III. was Tzar, or when he was killed and Catherine was Tzaritsa in one-half of Russia and Pougachef ruled the other?  Which was bad then, and which was good?  All men who happen to be in authority assert that their authority is necessary to keep the bad from oppressing the good, assuming that they themselves are the good PAR EXCELLENCE, who protect other good people from the bad.

But ruling means using force, and using force means doing to him to whom force is used, what he does not like and what he who uses the force would certainly not like done to himself. Consequently ruling means doing to others what we would not they should do unto us, that is, doing wrong."

~ Leo Tolstoy from "The Kingdom of God is Within you"

Mises: Creativity

"The creative spirit innovates necessarily. It must press forward. It must destroy the old and set the new in its place. It could not conceivably be relieved of this burden. If it were it would cease to be a pioneer. Progress cannot be organized.... Society can do nothing to aid progress. If it does not load the individual with quiet unbreakable chains, if it does not surround the prison in which it encloses him with quite insurmountable walls, it has done all that can be expected of it. Genius will soon find a way to win its own freedom."

~ Ludwig von Mises