Friedrich August von Hayek
Friedrich August von Hayek
Friedrich Hayek CH, born in Austria-Hungary as Friedrich August von Hayek and frequently referred to as F. A. Hayek, was an Austrian and British economist and philosopher best known for his defense of classical liberalism. Hayek shared the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Gunnar Myrdal for his "pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and ... penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena."...
NationalityAustrian
ProfessionEconomist
Date of Birth8 May 1899
CountryAustria
Friedrich August von Hayek quotes about
essentials enforcement coercion
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.
stupid done foolish
We shall not grow wiser before we learn that much that we have done was very foolish.
names people liberty
Wherever liberty as we understand it has been destroyed, this has almost always been done in the name of some new freedom promised to the people
rights government essentials
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.
religious commitment order
To live and work successfully with others requires more than faithfulness to one's concrete aims. It requires an intellectual commitment to a type of order in which, even on issues which to one are fundamental, others are allowed to pursue different ends. It is for this reason that to the liberal neither moral nor religious ideals are proper objects of coercion, while both conservatives and socialists recognize no such limits.
moving successful power
The successful politician owes his power to the fact that he moves within the accepted framework of thought, that he thinks and talks conventionally. It would be almost a contradiction in terms for a politician to be a leader in the field of ideas. His task in a democracy is to find out what the opinions held by the largest number are, not to give currency to new opinions which may become the majority view in some distant future.
issues imagination challenges
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.
powerful men liberty
The greatest danger to liberty today comes from the men who are most needed and most powerful in modern government, namely, the efficient expert administrators exclusively concerned with what they regard as the public good.
eye doubt danger
Nobody with open eyes can any longer doubt that the danger to personal freedom comes chiefly from the left.
country citizens should
We certainly do not regard it as right that the citizens of a large country should dominate those of a small adjoining country merely because they are more numerous.
wish liberty use
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.
government issues people
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.
government political economic
You can have economic freedom without political freedom, but you cannot have political freedom without economic freedom.
spiritual respect confused
Unlike the rationalism of the French Revolution, true liberalism has no quarrel with religion, and I can only deplore the militant and essentially illiberal antireligionism which animated so much of nineteenth-century Continental liberalism. ... What distinguishes the liberal from the conservative here is that, however profound his own spiritual beliefs, he will never regard himself as entitled to impose them on others and that for him the spiritual and the temporal are different sphere which ought not to be confused.