Friedrich August von Hayek Quotes - Page 7

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• It is one of the saddest spectacles of our time to see a great democratic movement support a policy which must lead to the destruction of democracy and which meanwhile can benefit only a minority of the masses who support it. Yet it is this support from the Left of the tendencies toward monopoly which make them so irresistible and the prospects of the future so dark.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Dark, Support, Democracy

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• Human envy is certainly not one of the sources of discontent that a free society can eliminate. It is probably one of the essential conditions for the preservation of such a society that we do not countenance envy, not sanction its demands by camouflaging it as social justice, but treat it, in the words of John Stuart Mill, as 'the most anti-social and evil of all passions.'

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Passion, Evil, Envy

  "The Constitution of Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek (p. 93), 1960.

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• We must raise and train an army of fighters for freedom.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Army, Fighter, Raises

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• 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

  Philosophy, Mean, Class

  "Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics". Book by Friedrich Hayek, The Intellectuals and Socialism (ch. 12), 1967.

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• The successful politician owes his power to the fact that he moves within the accepted framework of thought, that he thinks and talks conventionally. It would be almost a contradiction in terms for a politician to be a leader in the field of ideas. His task in a democracy is to find out what the opinions held by the largest number are, not to give currency to new opinions which may become the majority view in some distant future.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Moving, Successful, Power

  "The Constitution of Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Chap. 7 : Majority Rules, 1960.

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• 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

  Law, Essence, People

  "The Constitution of Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Chap. 6 : Equality, Value and Merit, 1960.

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• This is the constitutional limitation of man's knowledge and interests, the fact that he cannot know more than a tiny part of the whole of society and that therefore all that can enter into his motives are the immediate effects which his actions will have in the sphere he knows.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Men, Tiny, Facts

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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.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Watches, Safe, Conservative

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

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• There is perhaps no single factor contributing so much to people's frequent reluctance to let the market work as their inability to conceive how some necessary balance, between demand and supply, between exports and imports, or the like, will be brought about without deliberate control. 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

  People, Balance, Inability

  "In Memoriam: F.A. Hayek" by Virginia Postrel, reason.com. June 1992.

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• Civilization enables us constantly to profit from knowledge which we individually do not possess and because each individual's use of his particular knowledge may serve to assist others unknown to him in achieving their ends that men as members of civilized society can pursue their individual ends so much more successfully than they could alone.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Knowledge, Men, Civilization

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

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• All political theories assume, of course, that most individuals are very ignorant. Those who plead for liberty differ from the rest in that they include among the ignorant themselves as well as the wisest. Compared with the totality of knowledge which is continually utilized in the evolution of a dynamic civilization, the difference between the knowledge that the wisest and that the most ignorant individual can deliberately employ is comparatively insignificant.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Differences, Civilization, Political

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

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• Competition is like experimentation in science, a discovery process, and it must rely on the self interest of producers, it must allow them to use their knowledge for their purposes, because nobody else possesses the information

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Self, Discovery, Competition

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• If freedom is to flourish the philosophic foundations of a free society must be kept a living intellectual issue and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of the liveliest minds.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Issues, Imagination, Challenges

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• Nothing distinguishes more clearly conditions in a free country from those in a country under arbitrary government than the observance in the former of the great principles known as the Rule of Law.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Country, Government, Law

  "Der Weg zur Knechtschaft (The Road to Serfdom)". Book by Friedrich August von Hayek, reason.com. 1944.

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• Conservatism, though a necessary element in any stable society, is not a social program; in its paternalistic, nationalistic and power adoring tendencies it is often closer to socialism than true liberalism; and with its traditionalistic, anti-intellectual, and often mystical propensities it will never, except in short periods of disillusionment, appeal to the young and all those others who believe that some changes are desirable if this world is to become a better place.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Believe, Intellectual, Elements

  "The Road to Serfdom". Book by Friedrich August von Hayek, 1944.

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• The central problem of management is how spontaneous interaction of people within a firm, each possessing only bits of knowledge, can bring about the competitive success that could only be achieved by the deliberate direction of a senior management that possesses the combined knowledge of all employees and contractors

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Senior, People, Management

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• We did not realise how fragile our civilisation was.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  History, Realising, Civilisation

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• It is because every individual knows little and, in particular, because we rarely know which of us knows best best that we trust the independent and competitive efforts of many to induce the emergence of what we shall want when we see it.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Independent, Effort, Want

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• To rest the case for equal treatment of national or racial minorities on the assumption that they do not differ from other men is implicitly to admit that factual inequality would justify unequal treatment, and the proof that some differences do, in fact, exist would not be long in forthcoming. 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

  Men, Law, Essence

  "The Constitution of Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Chap. 6 : Equality, Value and Merit, 1960.

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• I must confess that if I had been consulted whether to establish a Nobel Prize in economics, I should have decidedly advised against it.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Should Have, Economics, Nobel

  Friedrich August von Hayek's Speech at the Nobel Banquet, www.nobelprize.org. December 10, 1974.

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• Why should we, however, in economics, have to plead ignorance of the sort of facts on which, in the case of a physical theory, a scientist would certainly be expected to give precise information?

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Ignorance, Giving, Facts

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• In the United States, where it has become almost impossible to use "liberal" in the sense in which I have used it, the term "libertarian" has been used instead. It may be the answer; but for my part I find it singularly unattractive. For my taste it carries too much the flavor of a manufactured term and of a substitute. What I should want is a word which describes the party of life, the party that favors free growth and spontaneous evolution. But I have racked my brain unsuccessfully to find a descriptive term which commends itself.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Party, Growth, Brain

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

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• If most people are not willing to see the difficulty, this is mainly because, consciously or unconsciously, they assume that it will be they who will settle these questions for the others, and because they are convinced of their own capacity to do this.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  People, Assuming, Settling

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

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• It would clearly not be an improvement to build all houses exactly alike in order to create a perfect market for houses, and the same is true of most other fields where differences between the individual products prevent competition from ever being perfect.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Order, Differences, Perfect

  "Individualism and Economic Order". Book by Friedrich Hayek, The Meaning of Competition, May 1946.

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• It may indeed prove to be far the most difficult and not the least important task for human reason rationally to comprehend its own limitations. It is essential for the growth of reason that as individuals we should bow to forces and obey principles which we cannot hope fully to understand, yet on which the advance and even the preservation of civilization depend.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Civilization, Growth, Important

  "The Counter-Revolution of Science". Book by Friedrich Hayek, "Conscious" Direction and the Growth of Reason (ch. 9), 1952.

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