Ludwig von Mises, “Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (Part One)”, The Mises Institute, 2020.

“It is true that economics is a theoretical science and as such abstains from any judgment of value. It is not its task to tell people what ends they should aim at. It is a science of the means to be applied for the attainment of ends chosen, not, o e sure, a science of the choosing of end. Ultimate decisions, the valuations and the choosing of ends, are beyond the scope of any science. Science never tells a man how he should act; it merely shows how a man must act if he wants to attain definite ends.” (Introduction, p. 10)

“The ultimate goal of human action is always the satisfaction of the acting man’s desire.” (p. 14)

“Man is not a being who cannot help yielding to the impulse that most urgently asks for satisfaction. … He arranges his wishes and desired into a scale, he chooses; in short, he acts.” (p. 16)

“The human mind is not a tabula rasa on which the external events write their own history. It is equipped with a set of tools for grasping reality. … …these tools are logically prior to any experience.” (p. 35)

“First we must realize that all actions are performed by individuals. … [e.g.,] The hangman, not the state, executes a criminal.” (p. 42)

“Economics is not, as ignorant positivists repeat again and again, backward because it is not “quantitative.” It is not quantitative and does not measure because there are no constants.” (p. 56)

“According to this doctrine[homo oeconomicus] traditional or orthodox economics does not deal with the behavior of man as he really is and acts, but with a fictitious or hypothetical image. It pictures a being driven exclusively by ‘economic’ motives, i.e., solely by the intention of making the greatest possible material or monetary profit. Such a being does not have and never did have a counterpart in reality…” (p. 62)

“Marxian polylogism asserts that the logical structure of mind is different with the members of various social classes. Racial polylogism differs from Marxian polylogism only in so far as it ascribes to each race a peculiar logical structure of mind…” (p. 75)

“The function of competition is to assign to every ember of a social system that position in which he can best serve the whole of society and all its members. It is a method of selecting the most able man for each performance.” (p. 117)