Humiliating to human pride as it may be, we must recognize that the advance and even the preservation of civilization are dependent upon a maximum of opportunity for accidents to happen.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEKSocialism can only be put into practice only by methods which most socialists disapprove.
More Friedrich August von Hayek Quotes
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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 -
It used to be the boast of free men that, so long as they kept within the bounds of the known law, there was no need to ask anybody’s permission or to obey anybody’s orders. It is doubtful whether any of us can make this claim today.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK -
I was quite depressed two weeks ago when I spent an afternoon at Brentano’s Bookshop in New York and was looking at the kind of books most people read. That seems to be hopeless; once you see that you lose all hope.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK -
If the human intellect is allowed to impose a preconceived pattern on society, if our powers of reasoning are allowed to lay claim to a monopoly of creative effort… then we must not be surprised if society, as such, ceases to function as a creative force.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK -
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 -
We must shed the illusion that we can deliberately “create the future of mankind.” This is the final conclusion of the forty years which I have now devoted to the study of these problems
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK -
When it becomes dominated by a collectivist creed, democracy will inevitably destroy itself.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK -
We did not realise how fragile our civilisation was.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK -
If democracy is a means rather than an end, its limits must be determined in the light of the purpose we want it to serve.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK -
This is not a dispute about whether planning is to be done or not. It is a dispute as to whether planning is to be done centrally, by one authority for the whole economic system, or is to be divided among many individuals.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK -
Many who think themselves infinitely superior to the aberrations of Nazism, and sincerely hate all manifestations, work at the same time for ideals whose realization would lead straight to the abhorred tyranny.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK -
It is no accident that on the whole there was more beauty and decency to be found in the life of the small peoples, and that among the large ones there was more happiness and content in proportion as they had avoided the deadly blight of centralization.
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 -
Never will man penetrate deeper into error than when he is continuing on a road which has led him to great success
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







