In government, the scum rises to the top.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEKIn government, the scum rises to the top.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEKAs is true with respect to other great evils, the measures by which war might be made altogether impossible for the future may well be worse than even war itself.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEKThe 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 HAYEKWe did not realise how fragile our civilisation was.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEKIt 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.
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 HAYEKThere 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 HAYEKThis 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 HAYEKLiberty is an opportunity for doing good, but this is only so when it is also an opportunity for doing wrong.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEKI 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 HAYEKThe chief evil is unlimited government, and nobody is qualified to wield unlimited power.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEKAnd 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 HAYEKEmergencies’ have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEKNo human mind can comprehend all the knowledge which guides the actions of society.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEKHumiliating 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 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.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK