The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEKJustice, 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.
More Friedrich August von Hayek Quotes
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Once wide coercive powers are given to governmental agencies for particular purposes, such powers cannot be effectively controlled by democratic assemblies.
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Freedom necessarily means that many things will be done which we do not like.
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The conservative feels safe and content only if he is assured that some higher wisdom watches and supervises change, only if he knows that some authority is charged with keeping the change “orderly.
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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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Hayek was making us think of the productive process as a process in time, inputs coming before outputs.
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Once you admit that the individual is merely a means to serve the ends of the higher entity called society or the nation, most of those features of totalitarianism which horrify us follow of necessity
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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.
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As 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.
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We did not realise how fragile our civilisation was.
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To be controlled in our economic pursuits means to be controlled in everything.
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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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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
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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.
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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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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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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?
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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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No human mind can comprehend all the knowledge which guides the actions of society.
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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.
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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.
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If socialists understood economics, they wouldn’t be socialist.
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…the case for individual freedom rests largely on the recognition of the inevitable and universal ignorance of all of us concerning a great many of the factors on which the achievements of our ends and welfare depend.
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The moral consequences of totalitarian propaganda…are destructive of all morals because they undermind one of the foundations of all morals: the sense of and respect for truth.
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The great aim of the struggle for liberty has been equality before the law.
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In government, the scum rises to the top.
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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