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It seems to be almost a law of human nature that it is easier for people to agree on a negative program - on the hatred of an enemy, on the envy of those better off - than on any positive task.

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
Humans
Easier
Task
People
Enemy
Envy
Almost
Tasks
Law
Hatred
Nature
Program
Seems
Agree
Better
Negative
Human
Positive

More quotes by Friedrich August von Hayek

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We must shed the illusion that we can deliberately 'create the future of mankind'
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It is rather a problem of how to secure the best use of resources known to any of the members of society, for ends whose relative importance only those individuals know.
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It is not the source but the limitation of power which prevents it from being arbitrary.
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The problems raised by a conscious direction of economic affairs on a national scale inevitably assume even greater dimensions when the same is attempted internationally. The conflict between planning and freedom cannot but become more serious as the similarity of standards and values among those submitted to a unitary plan diminishes.
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...the case for individual freedom rests largely on the recognition of the inevitable and universal ignorance of all of us concerning a great many of the factors on which the achievements of our ends and welfare depend.
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It is neither necessary nor desirable that national boundaries should mark sharp differences in standards of living, that membership of a national group should entitle to a share in a cake altogether different from that in which members of other groups share.
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If we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion.
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No human mind can comprehend all the knowledge which guides the actions of society.
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It is only because the majority opinion will always be opposed by some that our knowledge and understanding progress... it is always from a minority acting in ways different from what the majority would prescribe that the majority in the end learns to do better.
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... I prefer true but imperfect knowledge, even if it leaves much undetermined and unpredictable, to a pretense of exact knowledge that is likely to be false.
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There is, in a competitive society, nobody who can exercise even a fraction of the power which a socialist planning board would possess.
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It may be that a free society... carries in itself the forces of its own destruction, that once freedom has been achieved it is taken for granted and ceases to be valued, and that the free growth of ideas which is the essence of a free society will bring about the destruction of the foundations on which it depends.
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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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Whenever it is necessary that one of several conflicting opinions should prevail and when one would have to be made to prevail by force if need be, it is less wasteful to determine which has the stronger support by counting numbers than by fighting.
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Our faith in freedom does not rest on the foreseeable results in particular circumstances, but on the belief that it will, on balance, release more forces for the good than for the bad ... Freedom granted only when it is known beforehand that its effects will be beneficial is not freedom.
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Least of all shall we preserve democracy or foster its growth if all the power and most of the important decisions rest with an organization far too big for the common man to survey or comprehend.
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Conservatism is only as good as what it conserves.
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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.
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The more the state plans the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.
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I am convinced that if the market system were the result of deliberate human design, and if the people guided by the price changes understood that their decisions have significance far beyond their immediate aims, this mechanism would have been acclaimed as one of the greatest triumphs of the human mind.
Friedrich August von Hayek