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We shall never prevent the abuse of power if we are not prepared to limit power in a way which occasionally may prevent its use for desirable purposes.

Friedrich August von Hayek

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Friedrich August von Hayek
Age: 92 †
Born: 1899
Born: May 8
Died: 1992
Died: March 23
Economist
Historian
Philosopher
Political Scientist
University Teacher
Vienna
Austria
Friedrich August von Hayek
Friedrich von Hayek
Friedrich A. von Hayek
Friedrich A. Von Hayek
F. A. von Hayek
Friedrich August Von Hayek
Hayek
F. A. Hayek
Never
Prepared
Limits
Shall
Occasionally
Purpose
Desirable
Use
Purposes
Power
Prevent
May
Limit
Way
Abuse

More quotes by Friedrich August von Hayek

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Unlike proportionality, progression provides no principle which tells us what the relative burden of different persons ought to be the argument based on the presumed justice of progression provides no limitation, as has often been admitted by its supporters, before all incomes above a certain figure are confiscated, and those below left untaxed.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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Capitalism created the possibility of employment.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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We must shed the illusion that we can deliberately create the future of mankind. This is the final conclusion of the forty years which I have now devoted to the study of these problems
Friedrich August von Hayek
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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
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Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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[The] impersonal process of the market ... can be neither just nor unjust, because the results are not intended or foreseen.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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Economic transactions between national bodies who are at the same time the supreme judges of their own behavior, who bow to no superior law, and whose representatives cannot be bound by any considerations but the immediate interest of their respective nations, must end in clashes of power.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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Without the rich - without those who accumulated capital - those poor who could exist at all would be very much poorer indeed, scratching a livelihood from marginal lands on which every drought would kill most of the children they would be trying to raise.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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No human mind can comprehend all the knowledge which guides the actions of society.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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When it becomes dominated by a collectivist creed, democracy will inevitably destroy itself.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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Competition means decentralized planning by many separate persons.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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It is perhaps the most characteristic feature of the intellectual that he judges new ideas not by their specific merits but by the readiness with which they fit into his general conceptions, into the picture of the world which he regards as modern or advanced.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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While an equality of rights under a limited government is possible and an essential condition of individual freedom, a claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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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
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If we can reduce the risk of friction likely to lead to war, this is probably all we can reasonably hope to achieve.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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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
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It is possible for a dictator to govern in a liberal way. And it is also possible for a democracy to govern with a total lack of liberalism. Personally I prefer a liberal dictator to democratic government lacking liberalism.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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I am certain, however, that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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As is true with respect to other great evils, the measures by which war might be made altogether impossible for the future may well be worse than even war itself.
Friedrich August von Hayek