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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.

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
Knowledge
Pretense
True
Unpredictable
Even
Exact
Much
Imperfect
Prefer
Leaves
False
Likely
Undetermined

More quotes by Friedrich August von Hayek

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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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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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[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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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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And who will deny that a world in which the wealthy are powerful is still a better world than one in which only the already powerful can acquire wealth?
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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Capitalism created the possibility of employment.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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The attitude of the liberal towards society is like that of the gardener who tends a plant and, in order to create the conditions most favorable to its growth, must know as much as possible about its structure and the way it functions.
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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Freedom necessarily means that many things will be done which we do not like.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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If socialists understood economics, they wouldn't be socialist.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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There may be few instances in which the superstition that only measurable magnitudes can be important has done positive harm in the economic field: but the present inflation and employment problems are a very serious one.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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To combat depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about because we are suffering from a misdirection of production, we want to create further misdirection -- a procedure which can only lead to a much more severe crisis as soon as the credit expansion comes to an end.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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What a free society offers to the individual is much more than what he would be able to do if only he were free.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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This means that to entrust to science - or to deliberate control according to scientific principles - more than scientific method can achieve may have deplorable effects.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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With the exception only of the period of the gold standard, practically all governments of history have used their exclusive power to issue money to defraud and plunder the people.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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Many who think themselves infinitely superior to the aberrations of Nazism, and sincerely hate all manifestations, work at the same time for ideals whose realization would lead straight to the abhorred tyranny.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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It is not the source but the limitation of power which prevents it from being arbitrary.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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The more I learn about the evolution of ideas, the more I have become aware that I am simply an unrepentant Old Whig-with the stress on the old.
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