51 Friedrich August von Hayek Quotes (FREEDOM)

Top 10 Most Famous Friedrich August von Hayek Quotes (BEST)

“What our generation has forgotten is that the system of private property is the most important guarantee of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not. It is only because the control of the means of production is divided among many people acting independently that nobody has complete power over us, that we as individuals can decide what to do with ourselves.”
Friedrich August von Hayek

The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

If socialists understood economics, they wouldn't be socialist. — If socialists understood economics, they wouldn’t be socialist.

“From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time”
Friedrich August von Hayek

I do not think it is an exaggeration to say history is largely a history of inflation, usually inflations engineered by governments for the gain of governments. — I do not think it is an exaggeration to say history is largely a history of **inflation**, usually inflations engineered by governments for the gain of governments.

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. — 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.

There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal.

“A society that does not recognize that each individual has values of his own which he is entitled to follow can have no respect for the dignity of the individual and cannot really know freedom.”
Friedrich August von Hayek

'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded. — ‘Emergencies’ have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.

Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion.

14 Friedrich August von Hayek Quotes on Freedom and Liberty

“Those who are willing to surrender their freedom for security have always demanded that if they give up their full freedom it should also be taken from those not prepared to do so.”
Friedrich August von Hayek

To be controlled in our economic pursuits means to be controlled in everything.

“Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions and will receive praise or blame for them. Liberty and responsibility are inseparable.”
Friedrich August von Hayek

The individualist… recognizes the limitations of the powers of individual reason and consequently advocates freedom.

“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

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.

“Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions. Liberty and responsibility are inseparable.”
Friedrich August von Hayek

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.

“Money is one of the greatest instruments of freedom ever invented by man. It is money which in existing society opens an astounding range of choice to the poor man, a range greater than that which not many generations ago was open to the wealthy.”
Friedrich August von Hayek

Coercion is evil precisely because it eliminates an individual as a thinking and valuing person and makes him a bare tool in the achievement of the ends of another.

“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.”
Friedrich August von Hayek

The argument for liberty is… an argument... against the use of coercion to prevent others from doing better. — The argument for liberty is… an argument… against the use of coercion to prevent others from doing better.

“Liberty is not merely one particular value…it is the source and condition of most moral values. 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

We must face the fact that the preservation of individual freedom is incompatible with a full satisfaction of our views of distributive justice.

4 Friedrich August von Hayek Quotes on Capitalism and the Free Market

“Capitalism is not only a better form of organizing human activity than any deliberate design, any attempt to organize it to satisfy particular preferences, to aim at what people regard as beautiful or pleasant order, but it is also the indispensable condition for just keeping that population alive which exists already in the world. I regard the preservation of what is known as the capitalist system, of the system of free markets and the private ownership of the means of production, as an essential condition of the very survival of mankind.”
Friedrich August von Hayek

“The advantage of a free market is that it allows millions of decision-makers to respond individually to freely determined prices, allocating resources – labor, capital and human ingenuity – in a manner that can’t be mimicked by a central plan, however brilliant the central planner.”
Friedrich August von Hayek

“Our freedom of choice in a competitive society rests on the fact that, if one person refuses to satisfy our wishes, we can turn to another. But if we face a monopolist we are at his absolute mercy. And an authority directing the whole economic system of the country would be the most powerful monopolist conceivable…it would have complete power to decide what we are to be given and on what terms. It would not only decide what commodities and services were to be available and in what quantities; it would be able to direct their distributions between persons to any degree it liked.”
Friedrich August von Hayek

“It is one of the saddest spectacles of our time to see a great democratic movement support a policy which must lead to the destruction of democracy and which meanwhile can benefit only a minority of the masses who support it. Yet it is this support from the Left of the tendencies toward monopoly which make them so irresistible and the prospects of the future so dark.”
Friedrich August von Hayek

3 Friedrich August von Hayek Quotes on Socialism

“[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

The idea of social justice is that the state should treat different people unequally in order to make them equal.

“It seems to me that socialists today can preserve their position in academic economics merely by the pretense that the differences are entirely moral questions about which science cannot decide.”
Friedrich August von Hayek

9 Friedrich August von Hayek Quotes About Government

“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

In government, the scum rises to the top.

The chief evil is unlimited government, and nobody is qualified to wield unlimited power.

The more the state 'plans' the more difficult planning becomes for the individual. — The more the state ‘plans’ the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.

Once wide coercive powers are given to government agencies… such powers cannot be effectively controlled.

“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

The history of government management of money has, except for a few short happy periods, been one of incessant fraud and deception. — The history of government management of **money** has, except for a few short happy periods, been one of incessant fraud and deception.

By giving the government unlimited powers, the most arbitrary rule can be made legal; and in this way a democracy may set up the most complete despotism imaginable.

Nobody with open eyes can any longer doubt that the danger to personal freedom comes chiefly from the left.

3 Inspirational Friedrich August von Hayek Quotes

“It is true that the virtues which are less esteemed and practiced now–independence, self-reliance, and the willingness to bear risks, the readiness to back one’s own conviction against a majority, and the willingness to voluntary cooperation with one’s neighbors–are essentially those on which an individualist society rests. Collectivism has nothing to put in their place, and in so far as it already has destroyed then it has left a void filled by nothing but the demand for obedience and the compulsion of the individual to what is collectively decided to be good.”
Friedrich August von Hayek

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.

Individual liberty demonstrates that some manners of living are more successful than others. — Individual liberty demonstrates that some manners of living are more **successful** than others.

8 Friedrich August von Hayek Quotes that Will Make You Think

“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

We shall not grow wiser before we learn that much that we have done was very foolish. — We shall not grow **wiser** before we **learn** that much that we have done was very foolish.

Freedom granted only when it is known beforehand that its effects will be beneficial is not freedom.

From the saintly and single-minded idealist to the fanatic is often but a step.

“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