"Democracy is essentially a means, a utilitarian device……" — Friedrich August von Hayek
"Democracy is essentially a means, a utilitarian device for safeguarding internal peace and individual freedom. As such it is by no means infallible or certain. Nor must we forget that there has often been much more cultural and spiritual freedom under an autocratic rule than under some democracies and it is at least conceivable that under the government of a very homogeneous and doctrinaire majority democratic government might be as oppressive as the worst dictatorship."
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Friedrich August von Hayek
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136 Quotes by Friedrich August von Hayek
Friedrich August von Hayek has 136 quotes on this site.
A few more worth reading:
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With the exception only of the period of the gold standard, practically all governments of history have used their exclusive…
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'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.
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The mind cannot foresee its own advance.
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...the case for individual freedom rests largely on the recognition of the inevitable and universal ignorance of all of us…
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All political theories assume, of course, that most individuals are very ignorant. Those who plead for liberty differ from the…
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The system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but…
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The ultimate decision about what is accepted as right and wrong will be made not by individual human wisdom but…
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Justice, like liberty and coercion, is a concept which, for the sake of clarity, ought to be confined to the…
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What a free society offers to the individual is much more than what he would be able to do if…
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Human envy is certainly not one of the sources of discontent that a free society can eliminate. It is probably…
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Capitalism is not only a better form of organizing human activity than any deliberate design, any attempt to organize it…
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The principle that the end justifies the means is in individualist ethics regarded as the denial of all morals. In…
See all 136 quotes by Friedrich August von Hayek »
More Autocratic Quotes
This quote is filed under Autocratic Quotes,
one of 29 quotes in that category. Here are a few more:
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Under capitalism, we can't have democracy by definition. Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are…
— Noam Chomsky
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Great leaders are paradoxical. They catalyze, rather control, the work of their teams. They have an overarching vision for the…
— Guy Kawasaki
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An autocratic system of coercion, in my opinion, soon degenerates. For force always attracts men of low morality, and I…
— Albert Einstein
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Capital requires protection, as do the institutions through which it operates. As capital expands its operations, the state that is…
— Michael Parenti
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I have long been aware that when an independent intellectual stands up to an autocratic state, step one toward freedom…
— Liu Xia
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A lot of Arabs have proven to themselves that there is an alternative to Bin Laden-ism if they want to…
— Irshad Manji
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Despotism has forever had a powerful hold upon the world. Autocratic government, not self-government, has been the prevailing state of…
— Calvin Coolidge
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In Europe, it appears that in the name of democracy, elites are pursuing an autocratic, centralized power, seeking economic control…
— Maggie Gallagher
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A republican government is in a hundred points weaker than one that is autocratic; but in this one point it…
— Henry Ward Beecher
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There are certain narrow, umimaginative, and autocratic old people who seem to call out the most mischievous and sometimes the…
— Kate Douglas Wiggin
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Autocratic governments are masters of self-contradiction. They say one thing, do another.
— Alastair Reynolds
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Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are, in principle, under autocratic control. Thus, a corporation…
— Noam Chomsky
See all 29 Autocratic Quotes »