Friedrich August von Hayek Quotes - Page 3

To discover the meaning of what is called "social justice" has been one of my chief preoccupations for more than 10 years. I have failed in this endeavour or rather, have reached the conclusion that, with reference to society of free men, the phrase has no meaning whatever.

By the time any view becomes a majority view, it is no longer the best view: somebody will already have advanced beyond the point which the majority have reached.

Through the inevitable mismanagement of resources and goods at the disposal of the state, all forms of collectivism lead eventually to tyranny.

The idea that human kind can shape the world according to wish is what I call the fatal conceit

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.

We must shed the illusion that we can deliberately "create the future of mankind." This is the final conclusion of the forty years which I have now devoted to the study of these problems

A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.

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

To combat the depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about.

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.

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.

The principle that the end justifies the means is in individualist ethics regarded as the denial of all morals. In collectivist ethics it becomes necessarily the supreme rule.

The system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not.

As is true with respect to other great evils, the measures by which war might be made altogether impossible for the future may well be worse than even war itself.

Once politics become a tug-of-war for shares in the income pie, decent government is impossible.

Socialist thought owes its appeal to the young largely to its visionary character; the very courage to indulge in Utopian thought is in this respect a source of strength for socialism which traditional liberalism sadly lacks. Speculation about general principles provides an opportunity for the play of the imagination of those who are unencumbered by much knowledge of the facts of present-day life. Their ideas suffer from inherent contradictions, and any attempt to put them into practice must produce something utterly different from what they expect.

Liberty is an opportunity for doing good, but this is only so when it is also an opportunity for doing wrong.

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.

When we ask what ought to be the relative remunerations of a nurse or a butcher, or a coal miner and a judge at a high court, of the deep sea diver of the cleaner of sewers, of the organiser of a new industry and a jockey, of the inspector of taxes and the inventor of a life-saving drug, of the jet-pilot or the professor of mathematics, the appeal to 'social justice' does not give us the slightest help in deciding.

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.

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.

The mischievous idea that all public needs should be satisfied by compulsory organization and that all the means that individuals are willing to devote to pubic purposes should be under the control of government, is wholly alien to the basic principles of a free society.

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.

Is there a greater tragedy imaginable than that, in our endeavour consciously to shape our future in accordance with high ideals, we should in fact unwittingly produce the very opposite of what we have been striving for?

Liberty and responsibility are inseparable.