Quote

The Germans would appear as the disturbers of peace, as they already do to some people, merely because they were the first to take the path along which all the others were ultimately to follow.

Friedrich August von Hayek

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Others
Appear
Firsts
Ultimately
First
Merely
Take
Follow
Would
Along
People
Already
Path
Peace
Germans

More quotes by Friedrich August von Hayek

Image
Planning leads to dictatorship because dictatorship is the most effective instrument of coercion and the enforcement of ideals and, as such, essential if central planning on a large scale is to be possible.
Friedrich August von Hayek
Image
It is because freedom means the renunciation of direct control of individual efforts that a free society can make use of so much more knowledge than the mind of the wisest ruler could comprehend.
Friedrich August von Hayek
Image
We can either have a free Parliament or a free people. Personal freedom requires that all authority is restrained by long-run principles which the opinion of the people approves.
Friedrich August von Hayek
Image
We must shed the illusion that we can deliberately 'create the future of mankind'
Friedrich August von Hayek
Image
Independence of mind or strength of character is rarely found among those who cannot be confident that they will make their way by their own effort.... Indeed, when security is understood in too absolute a sense, the general striving for it, far from increasing the chances of freedom, becomes the greatest threat to it.
Friedrich August von Hayek
Image
At a time when most movements that are thought to be progressive advocate further encroachments on individual liberty, those who cherish freedom are likely to expend their energies in opposition. In this they find themselves much of the time on the same side as those who habitually resist change.
Friedrich August von Hayek
Image
The argument for liberty is not an argument against organization, which is one of the most powerful tools human reason can employ, but an argument against all exclusive, privileged, monopolistic organization, against the use of coercion to prevent others from doing better.
Friedrich August von Hayek
Image
There is, in a competitive society, nobody who can exercise even a fraction of the power which a socialist planning board would possess.
Friedrich August von Hayek
Image
No human mind can comprehend all the knowledge which guides the actions of society.
Friedrich August von Hayek
Image
Socialism has never and nowhere been at first a working-class movement.
Friedrich August von Hayek
Image
The [classical] liberal, of course, does not deny that there are some superior people -- he is not an egalitarian -- but he denies that anyone has authority to decide who these superior people are.
Friedrich August von Hayek
Image
Socialism constitutes a threat to the present and future welfare of the human race, in the sense that neither socialism nor any other known substitute for the market order could sustain the current population of the world.
Friedrich August von Hayek
Image
We know: of course, with regard to the market and similar social structures, a great many facts which we cannot measure and on which indeed we have only some very imprecise and general information.
Friedrich August von Hayek
Image
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
Image
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
Image
It is not the source but the limitation of power which prevents it from being arbitrary.
Friedrich August von Hayek
Image
And it's a necessity [for journalists] to pretend to be competent on every subject, some of which they really do not understand. They are under that necessity, I regret I'm sorry for them. But to pretend to understand all the things you write about, and habitually to write about things you do not understand, is a very corrupting thing.
Friedrich August von Hayek
Image
Capitalism created the possibility of employment.
Friedrich August von Hayek
Image
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
Image
The effect of the people's agreeing that there must be central planning, without agreeing on the ends, will be rather as if a group of people were to commit themselves to take a journey together without agreeing where they want to go with the result that they may all have to make a journey which most of them do not want at all.
Friedrich August von Hayek