Friedrich August von Hayek Quotes About Economics

Quotes about: Economics

• '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.

• A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Equality, Government, Liberty

  "Law, Legislation and Liberty" by Friedrich August von Hayek, Vol. 2 : The Mirage of Social Justice, (Ch. 9), 1976.

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

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Politics, Economics, Socialist

• 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.

• 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

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

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Mean, Historical, Economics

• I use throughout the term 'liberal' in the original, nineteenth-century sense in which it is still current in Britain. In current American usage it often means very nearly the opposite of this. It has been part of the camouflage of leftish movements in this country, helped by muddleheadedness of many who really believe in liberty, that 'liberal' has come to mean the advocacy of almost every kind of government control.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Country, Believe, Mean

• The mischievous idea that all public needs should be satisfied by compulsory organization and that all the means that individuals are willing to devote to pubic purposes should be under the control of government, is wholly alien to the basic principles of a free society.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Mean, Government, Organization

• It seems to me that socialists today can preserve their position in academic economics merely by the pretense that the differences are entirely moral questions about which science cannot decide.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Differences, Today, Moral

  "A Conversation with Friedrich A. Von Hayek: Science and Socialism". Talk at American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Washington, D.C., 1979.

• Human envy is certainly not one of the sources of discontent that a free society can eliminate. It is probably one of the essential conditions for the preservation of such a society that we do not countenance envy, not sanction its demands by camouflaging it as social justice, but treat it, in the words of John Stuart Mill, as 'the most anti-social and evil of all passions.'

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Passion, Evil, Envy

  "The Constitution of Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek (p. 93), 1960.

• The argument for liberty is not an argument against organization, which is one of the most powerful tools human reason can employ, but an argument against all exclusive, privileged, monopolistic organization, against the use of coercion to prevent others from doing better.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Powerful, Organization, Liberty

  "The Constitution of Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek. Part I: "The Value of Freedom". Chapter 2: "The Creative Power of a Free Civilization", 1960.

• Socialism has never and nowhere been at first a working-class movement. It is by no means an obvious remedy for the obvious evil which the interests of that class will necessarily demand. It is a construction of theorists.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Philosophy, Mean, Class

  "Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics". Book by Friedrich Hayek, The Intellectuals and Socialism (ch. 12), 1967.

• The system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Important, Liberty, Libertarian

• The greatest danger to liberty today comes from the men who are most needed and most powerful in modern government, namely, the efficient expert administrators exclusively concerned with what they regard as the public good.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Powerful, Men, Liberty

  "The Constitution of Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek. Part III: "Freedom in the Welfare State". Chapter 17: "The Decline of Socialism and The Rise of the Welfare State", 1960.

• The principle that the end justifies the means is in individualist ethics regarded as the denial of all morals. In collectivist ethics it becomes necessarily the supreme rule.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Mean, Liberty, Principles

  "The Road to Serfdom". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Ch. 10 : Why The Worst Get On Top, 1940 - 1943.

• Competition is like experimentation in science, a discovery process, and it must rely on the self interest of producers, it must allow them to use their knowledge for their purposes, because nobody else possesses the information

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Self, Discovery, Competition

• The idea that human kind can shape the world according to wish is what I call the fatal conceit

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Ideas, Wish, Shapes

• The central problem of management is how spontaneous interaction of people within a firm, each possessing only bits of knowledge, can bring about the competitive success that could only be achieved by the deliberate direction of a senior management that possesses the combined knowledge of all employees and contractors

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Senior, People, Management

• To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society entirely to our liking, knowledge which in fact we do not possess, is likely to make us do much harm.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Liberty, Shapes, Facts

  "New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas". Book by Friedrich Hayek. Part I: "Philosophy ". Chapter 2: "The Pretence of Knowledge", pp. 33-34, 1978.

• I am still puzzled why those in the United States who truly believe in liberty should not only have allowed the left to appropriate this almost indispensable term but should even have assisted by beginning to use it themselves as a term of opprobrium. This seems to be particularly regrettable because of the consequent tendency of many true liberals to describe themselves as conservatives.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Believe, Liberty, United States

• Socialist thought owes its appeal to the young largely to its visionary character; the very courage to indulge in Utopian thought is in this respect a source of strength for socialism which traditional liberalism sadly lacks. Speculation about general principles provides an opportunity for the play of the imagination of those who are unencumbered by much knowledge of the facts of present-day life. Their ideas suffer from inherent contradictions, and any attempt to put them into practice must produce something utterly different from what they expect.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Philosophy, Character, Opportunity

• Why should we, however, in economics, have to plead ignorance of the sort of facts on which, in the case of a physical theory, a scientist would certainly be expected to give precise information?

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Ignorance, Giving, Facts

• We must show that liberty is not merely one particular value but that it is the source and condition of most moral values. What a free society offers to the individual is much more than what he would be able to do if only he were free. We can therefore not fully appreciate the value of freedom until we know how a society of free men as a whole differs from one in which unfreedom prevails.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Men, Appreciate, Individuality

• It is perhaps the most characteristic feature of the intellectual that he judges new ideas not by their specific merits but by the readiness with which they fit into his general conceptions, into the picture of the world which he regards as modern or advanced.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Philosophy, Ideas, Judging

• I must confess that if I had been consulted whether to establish a Nobel Prize in economics, I should have decidedly advised against it.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Should Have, Economics, Nobel

  Friedrich August von Hayek's Speech at the Nobel Banquet, www.nobelprize.org. December 10, 1974.

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