Friedrich August von Hayek Quotes - Page 10

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• The progress of the natural sciences in modern times has of course so much exceeded all expectations that any suggestion that there may be some limits to it is bound to arouse suspicion.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Expectations, Progress, Limits

  "New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas". Book by Friedrich Hayek. Part I: "Philosophy ". Chapter 2: "The Pretence of Knowledge", p. 30, 1978.

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• The social sciences, like much of biology but unlike most fields of the physical sciences, have to deal with structures of essential complexity, i.e. with structures whose characteristic properties can be exhibited only by models made up of relatively large numbers of variables.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Numbers, Essentials, Variables

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• He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Growth, Shapes, Doe

  "New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas". Book by Friedrich Hayek. Part I: "Philosophy ". Chapter 2: "The Pretence of Knowledge", pp. 33-34, 1978.

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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.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Philosophy, Psychology, Prejudice

  Friedrich August von Hayek's Prize Lecture, www.nobelprize.org. December 11, 1974.

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• The discussions of every age are filled with the issues on which its leading schools of thought differ. But the general intellectual atmosphere of the time is always determined by the views on which the opposing schools agree. They become the unspoken presuppositions of all thought, and common and unquestioningly accepted foundations on which all discussion proceeds.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  School, Views, Issues

  "The Counter-Revolution of Science". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Comte and Hegel (pt. 3), 1952.

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• I have arrived at the conviction that the neglect by economists to discuss seriously what is really the crucial problem of our time is due to a certain timidity about soiling their hands by going from purely scientific questions into value questions.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Hands, Problem, Economy

  "A Conversation with Friedrich A. Von Hayek: Science and Socialism". Talk at American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Washington, D.C., 1979.

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• As long-term institutions, I am totally against dictatorships. But a dictatorship may be a necessary system for a transitional period... Personally I prefer a liberal dictator to democratic government lacking liberalism. My personal impression - and this is valid for South America - is that in Chile, for example, we will witness a transition from a dictatorial government to a liberal government.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Government, America, Long

  "El Mercurio" Newspaper, 1981.

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• I regard it in fact as the great advantage of the mathematical technique that it allows us to describe, by means of algebraic equations, the general character of a pattern even where we are ignorant of the numerical values which will determine its particular manifestation.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Character, Mean, Mathematical Equations

  "New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas". Book by Friedrich Hayek. Part I: "Philosophy ". Chapter 2: "The Pretence of Knowledge", pp. 27-28, 1978.

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• It is, indeed, part of the liberal attitude to assume that, especially in the economic field, the self-regulating forces of the market will somehow bring about the required adjustments to new conditions, although no one can foretell how they will do this in a particular instance. There is perhaps no single factor contributing so much to people

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Attitude, Self, People

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• Every change in conditions will make necessary some change in the use of resources, in the direction and kind of human activities, in habits and practices. And each change in the actions of those affected in the first instance will require further adjustments that will gradually extend through the whole of society. Every change thus in a sense creates a "problemfor society, even though no single individual perceives it as such; it is gradually "solvedby the establishment of a new overall adjustment.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Practice, Society, Use

  "The Constitution of Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Part I. The Value of Freedom, Chap. 2 : The Creative Power of a Free Civilization, 1960.

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• We know: of course, with regard to the market and similar social structures, a great many facts which we cannot measure and on which indeed we have only some very imprecise and general information.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Information, Facts, Social

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• 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

  Taught Us, World, Lessons

  "The Road to Serfdom". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Ch. 15 : The Prospects of International Order, 1940 - 1943.

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• I can have little patience with those who oppose ... the theory of evolution or what are called "mechanistic" explanations of the phenomena of life because of certain moral consequences which at first seem to follow from these theories, and still less with those who regard it as irrelevant or impious to ask certain questions at all. By refusing to face the facts , the conservative only weakens his own position.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Theory Of Evolution, Littles, Faces

  "The Constitution of Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek, 1960.

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• It can hardly be denied that such a demand quite arbitrarily limits the facts which are to be admitted as possible causes of the events which occur in the real world.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Real, Limits, Causes

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• There exists no third principle for the organisation of the economics process which can be rationally chosen to achieve any desirable ends, in addition to either a functioning market in which nobody can conclusively determine how well-off particular groups or individuals will be, or a central direction where a group organised for power determines it.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Principles, Groups, Economics

  "Law, Legislation and Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Ch. 18 : The Containment of Power and the Dethronement of Politics, 1973.

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• The conservatives have already accepted a large part of the collectivist creed-a creed that has governed policy for so long that many of its institutions have come to be accepted as a matter of course and have become a source of pride to "conservative" parties who created them. Here the believer in freedom cannot but conflict with the conservative and take an essentially radical position, directed against popular prejudices, entrenched positions, and firmly established privileges. Follies and abuses are no better for having long been established principles of folly.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Party, Pride, Long

  "The Constitution of Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Postscript: Why I Am Not a Conservative, 1960.

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• Even when men approve of the same arrangements, it must be asked whether they approve of them because they exist or because they are desirable in themselves. The common resistance to the collectivist tide should not be allowed to obscure the fact that the belief in integral freedom is based on an essentially forward-looking attitude and not on any nostalgic longing for the past or a romantic admiration for what has been.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Attitude, Men, Past

  "The Constitution of Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Postscript: Why I Am Not a Conservative, 1960.

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• The more I learn about the evolution of ideas, the more I have become aware that I am simply an unrepentant Old Whig-with the stress on the "old.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Stress, Ideas, Evolution

  "The Constitution of Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Postscript: Why I Am Not a Conservative, 1960.

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• Hayek was making us think of the productive process as a process in time, inputs coming before outputs.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Time, Thinking, Input

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• Perhaps even more than elsewhere current notions of what is desirable and practicable are here still of a kind which may well produce the opposite of what they promise.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Opposites, Promise, May

  "The Road to Serfdom". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Ch. 15 : The Prospects of International Order, 1940 - 1943.

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• There 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 Hayek

  Important, May, Superstitions

  Friedrich August von Hayek's Prize Lecture, www.nobelprize.org. December 11, 1974.

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• In abbreviated form, by a kind of symbol, only the most essential information is passed on and passed on only to those concerned. It is more than a metaphor to describe the price system as a kind of machinery for registering change, or a system of telecommunications which enables individual producers to watch merely the movement of a few pointers, as an engineer might watch the hands of a few dials, in order to adjust their activities to changes of which they may never know more than is reflected in the price movement.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Hands, Order, Watches

  "The Use of Knowledge in Society" by Friedrich Hayek, American Economic Review, September 1945.

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• If we were to make no better use of victory than to countenance existing trends in this direction, only too visible before 1939, we might indeed find that we have defeated National Socialism merely to create a world of many national socialisms, differing in detail, but all equally totalitarian, nationalistic, and in recurrent conflict with each other.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Victory, Trends, Might

  "The Road to Serfdom". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Ch. 15 : The Prospects of International Order, 1940 - 1943.

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• This means that to entrust to science - or to deliberate control according to scientific principles - more than scientific method can achieve may have deplorable effects.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Mean, Scientific Method, Principles

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