If we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEKThe attitude of the liberal towards society is like that of the gardener who tends a plant and, in order to create the conditions most favorable to its growth, must know as much as possible about its structure and the way it functions.
More Friedrich August von Hayek Quotes
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Once wide coercive powers are given to governmental agencies for particular purposes, such powers cannot be effectively controlled by democratic assemblies.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK -
[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 -
The Nobel Prize confers on an individual an authority which in economics no man ought to possess.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK -
It would clearly not be an improvement to build all houses exactly alike in order to create a perfect market for houses, and the same is true of most other fields where differences between the individual products prevent competition from ever being perfect.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK -
No human mind can comprehend all the knowledge which guides the actions of society.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK -
To be controlled in our economic pursuits means to be controlled in everything.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK -
Freedom can be preserved only if it is treated as a supreme principle which must not be sacrificed for particular advantages.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK -
I have come to feel strongly that the greatest service I can still render to my fellow men would be that I could make the speakers and writers among them thoroughly ashamed ever again to employ the term “social justice.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK -
I am certain, however, that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK -
The mind cannot foresee its own advance.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK -
Socialism constitutes a threat to the present and future welfare of the human race, in the sense that neither socialism nor any other known substitute for the market order could sustain the current population of the world.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK -
We must face the fact that the preservation of individual freedom is incompatible with a full satisfaction of our views of distributive justice.
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The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.
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Capitalism created the possibility of employment.
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When it becomes dominated by a collectivist creed, democracy will inevitably destroy itself.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK