"The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments"
About this Quote
Mises is doing something deliberately bracing here: he refuses to let “evil” remain a misty moral category and pins it to an institution with a mailing address. Not famine, not plague, not “human nature” in the abstract - government. The line is calibrated for polemic, but it’s also a strategic reframe. If the worst harms are political, then economics isn’t just about efficiency; it’s a frontline defense against coercion.
The specific intent is to make the state the primary suspect in history’s atrocities. It’s a thesis compressed into a sentence: concentrated power doesn’t merely fail; it actively manufactures suffering at scale. “Inflicted” is the key verb. Evils happen; governments do them. And “bad governments” is doing double duty: it sounds like a modest qualifier while quietly implying that the mechanism of government makes “bad” not an exception but a recurring outcome whenever power expands faster than constraints.
Context matters. Mises lived through the collapse of empires, World War I, the rise of fascism and communism, and the bureaucratic machinery that made mass dispossession and murder administratively possible. For an Austrian School economist, these weren’t random horrors; they were the predictable endpoint of planning, propaganda, and emergency rule.
The subtext is a warning shot at the perennial temptation to solve social problems by centralizing authority. It’s also an invitation to distrust “good intentions” when they come with agencies, decrees, and prisons attached. Mises isn’t saying markets are pure; he’s saying governments can turn ordinary human vices into industrial policy.
The specific intent is to make the state the primary suspect in history’s atrocities. It’s a thesis compressed into a sentence: concentrated power doesn’t merely fail; it actively manufactures suffering at scale. “Inflicted” is the key verb. Evils happen; governments do them. And “bad governments” is doing double duty: it sounds like a modest qualifier while quietly implying that the mechanism of government makes “bad” not an exception but a recurring outcome whenever power expands faster than constraints.
Context matters. Mises lived through the collapse of empires, World War I, the rise of fascism and communism, and the bureaucratic machinery that made mass dispossession and murder administratively possible. For an Austrian School economist, these weren’t random horrors; they were the predictable endpoint of planning, propaganda, and emergency rule.
The subtext is a warning shot at the perennial temptation to solve social problems by centralizing authority. It’s also an invitation to distrust “good intentions” when they come with agencies, decrees, and prisons attached. Mises isn’t saying markets are pure; he’s saying governments can turn ordinary human vices into industrial policy.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
|---|---|
| Source | Verified source: Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and To... (Ludwig von Mises, 1944)
Evidence: It has been necessary to dwell upon these truisms because the mythologies and metaphysics of etatism have succeeded in wrapping them in mystery. The state is a human institution, not a superhuman being. He who says “state” means coercion and compulsion. He who says: There should be a law concerning this matter, means: The armed men of the government should force people to do what they do not want to do, or not to do what they like. He who says: This law should be better enforced, means: The police should force people to obey this law. He who says: The state is God, deifies arms and prisons. The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men. The worst evils which mankind ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster. (Part II: Nationalism → III: Etatism → 2.: The State (page number varies by edition; commonly cited as p. 11 in some reprints/ebooks)). This is a primary-source passage from Ludwig von Mises’ Omnipotent Government (first published 1944). The commonly-circulated standalone quote (“The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments”) is a sentence embedded in this longer paragraph. Many quote websites incorrectly cite a 1985 date; that refers to a later reprint/edition, not the first publication. A separate index page that cross-references the quote to p. 11 (edition-dependent) is available at The Quotable Mises. (See: https://thequotablemises.com/sources/omnipotent-government). Other candidates (1) Money Meltdown & Climate Change (Bob Robertson, 2010) compilation95.0% ... Ludwig von Mises ( 1881-1973 ) Economist and social philosopher : " The worst evils which mankind has ever had to... |
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APA Style (7th ed.)
Mises, Ludwig von. (2026, February 14). The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-worst-evils-which-mankind-has-ever-had-to-87785/
Chicago Style
Mises, Ludwig von. "The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments." FixQuotes. February 14, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-worst-evils-which-mankind-has-ever-had-to-87785/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments." FixQuotes, 14 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-worst-evils-which-mankind-has-ever-had-to-87785/. Accessed 6 Mar. 2026.
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