Our faith in freedom does not rest on the foreseeable results in particular circumstances, but on the belief that it will, on… — Friedrich August von Hayek Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
The ultimate decision about what is accepted as right and wrong will be made not by individual human wisdom but by the… — Friedrich August von Hayek Copy Share Image
I have arrived at the conviction that the neglect by economists to discuss seriously what is really the crucial problem of our… — Friedrich August von Hayek Copy Share Image
Should our moral beliefs really prove to be dependent on factual assumptions shown to be incorrect, it would be hardly moral to… — Friedrich August von Hayek Copy Share Image
To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society… — Friedrich August von Hayek Copy Share Image
By the age of fifteen, I had convinced myself that nobody could give a reasonable explanation of what he meant by the word 'God' and that it was therefore as meaningless to assert a belief as to assert a disbelief in God. Though this, in a general way, has remained my position ever since, I have always avoided unnecessarily to… — Friedrich August von Hayek Copy Share
Even when men approve of the same arrangements, it must be asked whether they approve of them because they exist or because… — Friedrich August von Hayek Copy Share Image
The confidence in the unlimited power of science is only too often based on a false belief that the scientific method consists… — Friedrich August von Hayek Copy Share Image
The word 'truth' itself ceases to have its old meaning. It describes no longer something to be found, with the individual conscience as the sole arbiter of whether in any particular instance the evidence (or the standing of those proclaiming it) warrants a belief; it becomes something to be laid down by authority, something which has to believed in the… — Friedrich August von Hayek Copy Share
“Probably it is true enough that the great majority are rarely capable of thinking independently, that on most questions they accept views… — Friedrich August von Hayek Copy Share Image
The system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those… — Friedrich August von Hayek Copy Share Image
By the time any view becomes a majority view, it is no longer the best view: somebody will already have advanced beyond the point… — Friedrich August von Hayek Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Should our moral beliefs really prove to be dependent on factual assumptions shown to be incorrect, it would be hardly moral to defend them… — Friedrich August von Hayek Copy Share Image
It is true that the virtues which are less esteemed and practiced now--independence, self-reliance, and the willingness to bear risks, the readiness to back one's own conviction against a majority, and the willingness to voluntary cooperation with one's neighbors--are essentially those on which the of an individualist society rests. Collectivism has nothing to put in their place, and in so… — Friedrich August von Hayek Copy Share
Unlike the rationalism of the French Revolution, true liberalism has no quarrel with religion, and I can only deplore the militant and essentially illiberal antireligionism which animated so much of nineteenth-century Continental liberalism. ... What distinguishes the liberal from the conservative here is that, however profound his own spiritual beliefs, he will never regard himself as entitled to impose them… — Friedrich August von Hayek Copy Share
We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage… Unless we can make the philosophic foundations of a free society once more a living intellectual issue, and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of our liveliest minds, the prospects of freedom are indeed dark. But if we… — Friedrich August von Hayek Copy Share
The central problem of management is how spontaneous interaction of people within a firm, each possessing only bits of knowledge, can bring about the… — Friedrich August von Hayek Copy Share Image
The discussions of every age are filled with the issues on which its leading schools of thought differ. But the general intellectual atmosphere of… — Friedrich August von Hayek Copy Share Image
The Nobel Prize confers on an individual an authority which in economics no man ought to possess. — Friedrich August von Hayek Copy Share Image
[Socialistic] economic planning, regulation, and intervention pave the way to totalitarianism by building a power structure that will inevitably be seized by the most… — Friedrich August von Hayek Copy Share Image
It is rather a problem of how to secure the best use of resources known to any of the members of society, for ends… — Friedrich August von Hayek Copy Share Image