“People do not cooperate under the division of labor because they love or should love one another. They cooperate because this best serves their own interests. Neither love nor charity nor any other sympathetic sentiments but rightly understood selfishness is what originally impelled man to adjust himself to the requirements of society, to respect the rights and freedoms of his fellow men and to substitute peaceful collaboration for enmity and conflict.”
Human Action (1949)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Ludwig von Mises 62
austrian economist 1881–1973Related quotes

“If one doesn't respect oneself one can have neither love nor respect for others.”

When asked, four days before the military coup of September 11, 1973, what the word ‘Love’ meant to him.
Section: Biography/Victor y el amor of http://www.fundacionvictorjara.cl/ 10/04/2007

Jeder liebt sein Land, seine Sitten, seine Sprache, sein Weib, seine Kinder, nicht weil sie die besten auf der Welt, sondern weil sie die bewährten Seinigen sind, und er in ihnen sich und seine Mühe selbst liebt.
Vol. 1, p. 13; translation vol. 1, p. 18
Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784-91)

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Give Pleasure
Source: The Bourgeois: Catholicism vs. Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France (1927), p. 89

“We know perfectly well that neither love nor peace of mind can be bought with any currency.”
Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 219