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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.

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
Society
Forces
Valued
Freedom
Destruction
Foundations
Free
Foundation
Ceases
Force
Essence
Carries
May
Depends
Carrie
Ideas
Growth
Achieved
Bring
Granted
Taken
Cease

More quotes by Friedrich August von Hayek

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Unlike liberalism, with its fundamental belief in the long-range power of ideas, conservatism is bound by the stock of ideas inherited at a given time. And since it does not really believe in the power of argument, its last resort is generally a claim to superior wisdom, based on some self-arrogated superior quality.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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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
Friedrich August von Hayek
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Perhaps even more than elsewhere current notions of what is desirable and practicable are here still of a kind which may well produce the opposite of what they promise.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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It used to be the boast of free men that, so long as they kept within the bounds of the known law, there was no need to ask anybody's permission or to obey anybody's orders. It is doubtful whether any of us can make this claim today.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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It is of the essence of the demand for equality before the law that people should be treated alike in spite of the fact that they are different.
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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Freedom can be preserved only if it is treated as a supreme principle which must not be sacrificed for particular advantages.
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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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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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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Conservatism is only as good as what it conserves.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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Freedom necessarily means that many things will be done which we do not like.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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[Socialistic] economic planning, regulation, and intervention pave the way to totalitarianism by building a power structure that will inevitably be seized by the most power-hungry and unscrupulous.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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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.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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We shall all be the gainers if we can create a world fit for small states to live in.
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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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
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The power which a multiple millionaire, who may be my neighbor and perhaps my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest functionaire possesses who wields the coercive power of the state, and on whose desecration it depends whether and how I am allowed to live or to work.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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Liberty'''.that condition of man in which coercion of some by others is reduced as much as possible in society
Friedrich August von Hayek
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The younger generation of today has grown up in a world in which in school and press the spirit of commercial enterprise has been represented as disreputable and the making of profit as immoral, where to employ a hundred people is represented as exploitation but to command the same number as honorable.
Friedrich August von Hayek