Whenever it is necessary that one of several conflicting opinions should prevail and when one would have to be made to prevail… — Friedrich August von Hayek Copy Share Image
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… — Friedrich August von Hayek Copy Share
It is only because the majority opinion will always be opposed by some that our knowledge and understanding progress... it is always… — Friedrich August von Hayek Copy Share Image
The task of the political philosopher can only be to influence public opinion, not to organize people for action. He will do so effectively only if he is not concerned with what is now politically possible but consistently defends the "general principles which are always the same." In this sense I doubt whether there can be such a thing as… — Friedrich August von Hayek Copy Share
It is only because the majority opinion will always be opposed by some that our knowledge and understanding progress. In the process… — Friedrich August von Hayek Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
The conception that government should be guided by majority opinion makes sense only if that opinion is independent of government. The ideal… — 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