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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

Without a theory the facts are silent.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Facts Silent Theory
Never will man penetrate deeper into error than when he is continuing on a road which has led him to great success
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Continuing Errors Men
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.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Differences Moral Today
Capitalism created the possibility of employment.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Capitalism Employment Possibility
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
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Ends Individual Mean
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

Attitude Growth Order
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
Freedom necessarily means that many things will be done which we do not like.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Done Mean Necessarily
We did not realise how fragile our civilisation was.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Civilisation History Realising
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.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Civilization Opportunity Pride
I am certain, however, that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Freedom Justice Mirages
It used to be the boast of free men that, so long as they kept within the bounds of the known law, there was no need to ask anybody’s permission or to obey anybody’s orders. It is doubtful whether any of us can make this claim today.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Men Order Responsibility
Emergencies’ have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Historical Liberty War
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 HAYEK

Assumptions Beliefs Facts Moral
We must face the fact that the preservation of individual freedom is incompatible with a full satisfaction of our views of distributive justice.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Justice Umpires Views
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
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
Once politics become a tug-of-war for shares in the income pie, decent government is impossible.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Government Pie War
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.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Essence Law People
In no other field has the world yet paid so dearly for the abandonment of nineteenth-century liberalism as in the field where the retreat began: in international relations. Yet only a small part of the lesson which experience ought to have taught us has been learned.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Lessons Taught Us World
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.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Conservative Safe Watches
[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
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.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Government Issues People
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
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

Faith Government Thinking
The great aim of the struggle for liberty has been equality before the law.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Law Liberty Struggle