The 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.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEKIf I am not mistaken, psychology, psychiatry and some branches of sociology, not to speak about the so-called philosophy of history, are even more affected by what I have called the scientistic prejudice, and by specious claims of what science can achieve.
More Friedrich August von Hayek Quotes
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Justice, like liberty and coercion, is a concept which, for the sake of clarity, ought to be confined to the deliberate treatment of men by other men.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK -
It is because freedom means the renunciation of direct control of individual efforts that a free society can make use of so much more knowledge than the mind of the wisest ruler could comprehend.
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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.
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And who will deny that a world in which the wealthy are powerful is still a better world than one in which only the already powerful can acquire wealth?
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK -
Socialism can only be put into practice only by methods which most socialists disapprove.
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There is, in a competitive society, nobody who can exercise even a fraction of the power which a socialist planning board would possess.
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When it becomes dominated by a collectivist creed, democracy will inevitably destroy itself.
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Freedom necessarily means that many things will be done which we do not like.
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Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one’s government is not necessarily to secure freedom.
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The great aim of the struggle for liberty has been equality before the law.
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The ultimate decision about what is accepted as right and wrong will be made not by individual human wisdom but by the disappearance of the groups that have adhered to the “wrong” beliefs.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK -
By giving the government unlimited powers, the most arbitrary rule can be made legal; and in this way a democracy may set up the most complete despotism imaginable.
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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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It is of the essence of the demand for equality before the law that people should be treated alike in spite of the fact that they are different.
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Emergencies’ have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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It is rather a problem of how to secure the best use of resources known to any of the members of society, for ends whose relative importance only those individuals know.
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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.
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All political theories assume, of course, that most individuals are very ignorant. Those who plead for liberty differ from the rest in that they include among the ignorant themselves as well as the wisest.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK -
Without a theory the facts are silent.
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 -
If I am not mistaken, psychology, psychiatry and some branches of sociology, not to speak about the so-called philosophy of history, are even more affected by what I have called the scientistic prejudice, and by specious claims of what science can achieve.
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.
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By the time any view becomes a majority view, it is no longer the best view: somebody will already have advanced beyond the point which the majority have reached.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK