Friedrich August von Hayek Quotes

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• If socialists understood economics, they wouldn't be socialist.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Politics, Economics, Socialist

  200 Copy quote

• 'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  War, Historical, Liberty

  "Law, Legislation and Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek. Volume 3: "The Political Order of a Free People". Chapter 17: "A Model Constitution", 1973.

  156 Copy quote

• Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions. Liberty and responsibility are inseparable.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Freedom, Mean, Responsibility

  "The Constitution of Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek. Part I: "The Value of Freedom". Chapter 5: "Responsibility and Freedom", 1960.

  159 Copy quote

• The idea of social justice is that the state should treat different people unequally in order to make them equal.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Order, Ideas, People

  205 Copy quote

• There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Differences, People, Liberty

  "Individualism: True and False" by Friedrich Hayek, 1945.

  169 Copy quote

• [Socialistic] economic planning, regulation, and intervention pave the way to totalitarianism by building a power structure that will inevitably be seized by the most power-hungry and unscrupulous.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Regulation, Way, Planning

  145 Copy quote

• The history of government management of money has, except for a few short happy periods, been one of incessant fraud and deception.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Government, Deception, Management

  12 Copy quote

• In government, the scum rises to the top.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Government, Scum, Libertarian

  95 Copy quote

• What our generation has forgotten is that the system of private property is the most important guarantee of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not. It is only because the control of the means of production is divided among many people acting independently that nobody has complete power over us, that we as individuals can decide what to do with ourselves.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Mean, Our Generation, People

  "The Road to Serfdom". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Ch. 7 : Economic Control and Totalitarianism, 1940 - 1943.

  186 Copy quote

• The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Men, Design, Liberty

  "The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism". Book by Friedrich Hayek. Chapter 5: "The Fatal Conceit", 1988.

  145 Copy quote

• The advantage of a free market is that it allows millions of decision-makers to respond individually to freely determined prices, allocating resources - labor, capital and human ingenuity - in a manner that can't be mimicked by a central plan, however brilliant the central planner.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Decision, Brilliant, Determined

  15 Copy quote

• Nothing is more securely lodged than the ignorance of the experts.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Ignorance, Experts

  16 Copy quote

• [T]hose who are willing to surrender their freedom for security have always demanded that if they give up their full freedom it should also be taken from those not prepared to do so.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Giving Up, Taken, Surrender

  59 Copy quote

• Nobody with open eyes can any longer doubt that the danger to personal freedom comes chiefly from the left.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Eye, Doubt, Danger

  "Law, Legislation and Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Ch. 18 : The Containment of Power and the Dethronement of Politics, 1973.

  52 Copy quote

• Social justice rests on the hate towards those that enjoy a comfortable position, namely, upon envy.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Hate, Envy, Justice

  80 Copy quote

• To be controlled in our economic pursuits means to be controlled in everything.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Mean, Historical, Economics

  18 Copy quote

• Conservatism is only as good as what it conserves.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Conservatism

  33 Copy quote

• The chief evil is unlimited government, and nobody is qualified to wield unlimited power.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Government, Evil, Unlimited

  "The Constitution of Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Postscript: Why I Am Not a Conservative, 1960.

  72 Copy quote

• The younger generation of today has grown up in a world in which in school and press the spirit of commercial enterprise has been represented as disreputable and the making of profit as immoral, where to employ a hundred people is represented as exploitation but to command the same number as honorable.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  School, Numbers, People

  34 Copy quote

• It is indeed probable that more harm and misery have been caused by men determined to use coercion to stamp out a moral evil than by men intent on doing evil.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Men, Thinking, Tyrants

  "The Constitution of Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek. Part II: "Freedom and the Law". Chapter 9: "Coercion and the State", 1960.

  78 Copy quote

• Capitalism is not only a better form of organizing human activity than any deliberate design, any attempt to organize it to satisfy particular preferences, to aim at what people regard as beautiful or pleasant order, but it is also the indispensable condition for just keeping that population alive which exists already in the world. I regard the preservation of what is known as the capitalist system, of the system of free markets and the private ownership of the means of production, as an essential condition of the very survival of mankind.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Beautiful, Mean, Order

  137 Copy quote

• While an equality of rights under a limited government is possible and an essential condition of individual freedom, a claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Government, Rights, Essentials

  24 Copy quote

• Few are ready to recognize that the rise of fascism and Nazism was not a reaction against the socialist trends of the preceding period but a necessary outcome of those tendencies.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Trends, Outcomes, Reactions

  34 Copy quote

• The moral consequences of totalitarian propaganda...are destructive of all morals because they undermind one of the foundations of all morals: the sense of and respect for truth.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Foundation, Politics, Moral

  32 Copy quote

• From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Equality, Law, People

  "The Constitution of Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek. Part I: "The Value of Freedom". Chapter 6: "Equality, Value and Merit", 1960.

  65 Copy quote

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