Should our moral beliefs really prove to be dependent on factual assumptions shown to be incorrect, it would be hardly moral to defend them by refusing to acknowledge the facts.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEKShould our moral beliefs really prove to be dependent on factual assumptions shown to be incorrect, it would be hardly moral to defend them by refusing to acknowledge the facts.
More Friedrich August von Hayek Quotes
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There may be few instances in which the superstition that only measurable magnitudes can be important has done positive harm in the economic field: but the present inflation and employment problems are a very serious one.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK -
We shall not grow wiser before we learn that much that we have done was very foolish.
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 -
The freedom that will be used by only one man in a million may be more important to society and more beneficial to the majority than any freedom that we all use.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK -
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.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK -
In government, the scum rises to the top.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK -
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.
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With the exception only of the period of the gold standard, practically all governments of history have used their exclusive power to issue money to defraud and plunder the people.
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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[The] impersonal process of the market … can be neither just nor unjust, because the results are not intended or foreseen.
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To be controlled in our economic pursuits means to be controlled in everything.
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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 HAYEK






