Friedrich August von Hayek

Liberty and responsibility are inseparable.

— Friedrich August von Hayek

Socialism has never and nowhere been at first a working-class movement.

— Friedrich August von Hayek

The great aim of the struggle for liberty has been equality before the law.

— Friedrich August von Hayek

Without a theory the facts are silent.

— Friedrich August von Hayek

'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.

— Friedrich August von Hayek

You can have economic freedom without political freedom, but you cannot have political freedom without economic freedom.

— Friedrich August von Hayek

Through the inevitable mismanagement of resources and goods at the disposal of the state, all forms of collectivism lead eventually to tyranny.

— Friedrich August von Hayek

The state itself becomes more and more identified with the interests of those who run things than with the interests of the…

— Friedrich August von Hayek

It is not the source but the limitation of power which prevents it from being arbitrary.

— Friedrich August von Hayek

The Nobel Prize confers on an individual an authority which in economics no man ought to possess.

— Friedrich August von Hayek

When it becomes dominated by a collectivist creed, democracy will inevitably destroy itself.

— Friedrich August von Hayek

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

— Friedrich August von Hayek

We can either have a free Parliament or a free people. Personal freedom requires that all authority is restrained by long-run principles…

— Friedrich August von Hayek

It is because freedom means the renunciation of direct control of individual efforts that a free society can make use of so…

— Friedrich August von Hayek

Once wide coercive powers are given to governmental agencies for particular purposes, such powers cannot be effectively controlled by democratic assemblies.

— Friedrich August von Hayek

If most people are not willing to see the difficulty, this is mainly because, consciously or unconsciously, they assume that it will…

— Friedrich August von Hayek

At a time when most movements that are thought to be progressive advocate further encroachments on individual liberty, those who cherish freedom…

— Friedrich August von Hayek

By the time any view becomes a majority view, it is no longer the best view: somebody will already have advanced beyond…

— Friedrich August von Hayek

All political theories assume, of course, that most individuals are very ignorant. Those who plead for liberty differ from the rest in…

— Friedrich August von Hayek

We certainly do not regard it as right that the citizens of a large country should dominate those of a small adjoining…

— Friedrich August von Hayek

..where effective competition can be created, it is a better way of guiding individual efforts than any other... regards competition as superior…

— Friedrich August von Hayek

It is one of the most fatal illusions that, by substituting negotiations between states or organized groups for competition for markets or…

— Friedrich August von Hayek

To combat depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it…

— Friedrich August von Hayek

Unlike the rationalism of the French Revolution, true liberalism has no quarrel with religion, and I can only deplore the militant and…

— Friedrich August von Hayek

All political theories assume, of course, that most individuals are very ignorant. Those who plead for liberty differ from the rest in…

— Friedrich August von Hayek

Unlike liberalism, with its fundamental belief in the long-range power of ideas, conservatism is bound by the stock of ideas inherited at…

— Friedrich August von Hayek

The problems raised by a conscious direction of economic affairs on a national scale inevitably assume even greater dimensions when the same…

— Friedrich August von Hayek

It is not difficult to deprive the great majority of independent thought. But the minority who will retain an inclination to criticize…

— Friedrich August von Hayek

The system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less…

— Friedrich August von Hayek

Personally I prefer a liberal dictator to democratic government lacking liberalism.

— Friedrich August von Hayek

To combat the depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought…

— Friedrich August von Hayek

The idea of social justice is that the state should treat different people unequally in order to make them equal

— Friedrich August von Hayek

Wherever liberty as we understand it has been destroyed, this has almost always been done in the name of some new freedom…

— Friedrich August von Hayek

Human reason can neither predict nor deliberately shape its own future. Its advances consist in finding out where it has been wrong.

— Friedrich August von Hayek

Once politics become a tug-of-war for shares in the income pie, decent government is impossible.

— Friedrich August von Hayek

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

No human mind can comprehend all the knowledge which guides the actions of society.

— Friedrich August von Hayek

Socialism can only be put into practice only by methods which most socialists disapprove.

— Friedrich August von Hayek

Justice, like liberty and coercion, is a concept which, for the sake of clarity, ought to be confined to the deliberate treatment…

— Friedrich August von Hayek

The idea that human kind can shape the world according to wish is what I call the fatal conceit

— Friedrich August von Hayek