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If democracy is a means rather than an end, its limits must be determined in the light of the purpose we want it to serve.

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
Light
Determined
Must
Serve
Mean
Limits
Democracy
Purpose
Rather
Means
Ends

More quotes by Friedrich August von Hayek

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The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.
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We certainly do not regard it as right that the citizens of a large country should dominate those of a small adjoining country merely because they are more numerous.
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If socialists understood economics, they wouldn't be socialist.
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Liberty is an opportunity for doing good, but this is only so when it is also an opportunity for doing wrong.
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Hayek was making us think of the productive process as a process in time, inputs coming before outputs.
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Liberty and responsibility are inseparable.
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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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Never will man penetrate deeper into error than when he is continuing on a road which has led him to great success
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[The] impersonal process of the market ... can be neither just nor unjust, because the results are not intended or foreseen.
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This is the constitutional limitation of man's knowledge and interests, the fact that he cannot know more than a tiny part of the whole of society and that therefore all that can enter into his motives are the immediate effects which his actions will have in the sphere he knows.
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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Why should we, however, in economics, have to plead ignorance of the sort of facts on which, in the case of a physical theory, a scientist would certainly be expected to give precise information?
Friedrich August von Hayek
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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.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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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.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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The moral consequences of totalitarian propaganda...are destructive of all morals because they undermind one of the foundations of all morals: the sense of and respect for truth.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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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
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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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The state itself becomes more and more identified with the interests of those who run things than with the interests of the people in general.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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The history of government management of money has, except for a few short happy periods, been one of incessant fraud and deception.
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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.
Friedrich August von Hayek