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In government, the scum rises to the top.

Friedrich August von Hayek

Liberty is an opportunity for doing good, but this is only so when it is also an opportunity for doing wrong.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Doing Good Liberty Opportunity
That there is little hope of international order or lasting peace so long as every country is free to employ whatever measures it thinks desirable in its own immediate interest, however damaging they may be to others, needs little emphasis now.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Country Desirable Measure Order Thinking
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 HAYEK

Essentials Liberty Wish
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 Libertarian Liberty
It is neither necessary nor desirable that national boundaries should mark sharp differences in standards of living, that membership of a national group should entitle to a share in a cake altogether different from that in which members of other groups share.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Cake Differences Membership
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.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Democracy Giving Government
We did not realise how fragile our civilisation was.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Civilisation History Realising
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

Finals Mankind Study Years
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

Advantage Freedom Principles
Wherever liberty as we understand it has been destroyed, this has almost always been done in the name of some new freedom promised to the people
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Liberty Names People
[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

Giving Surrender Taken Up
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

Order Population Race
We shall never prevent the abuse of power if we are not prepared to limit power in a way which occasionally may prevent its use for desirable purposes.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Abuse Desirable May Occasionally Purpose
Nobody with open eyes can any longer doubt that the danger to personal freedom comes chiefly from the left.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Danger Doubt Eye
The chief evil is unlimited government, and nobody is qualified to wield unlimited power.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Evil Government Unlimited
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

Done Economic Planning

In government, the scum rises to the top.

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In government, the scum rises to the top.

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