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In government, the scum rises to the top.

Friedrich August von Hayek

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
Socialism has never and nowhere been at first a working-class movement. It is by no means an obvious remedy for the obvious evil which the interests of that class will necessarily demand. It is a construction of theorists.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Class Mean Movement Philosophy Working
No human mind can comprehend all the knowledge which guides the actions of society.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Action Knowledge Mind
When it becomes dominated by a collectivist creed, democracy will inevitably destroy itself.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Democracy Politics Power
The mind cannot foresee its own advance.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Advance Foresee Mind Own
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
[The] impersonal process of the market … can be neither just nor unjust, because the results are not intended or foreseen.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Justice Process Unjust
If democracy is a means rather than an end, its limits must be determined in the light of the purpose we want it to serve.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

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

Government Pie War
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
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
Liberty and responsibility are inseparable.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Inseparable Liberty Responsibility
Conservatism is only as good as what it conserves.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Conservatism Conserves Good
By the time any view becomes a majority view, it is no longer the best view: somebody will already have advanced beyond the point which the majority have reached.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Advanced Majority Point Views
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
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

In government, the scum rises to the top.

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In government, the scum rises to the top.

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