Quotes from Friedrich August von Hayek

The mind cannot foresee its own advance.

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 know, in other words, the general conditions in which what we call, somewhat misleadingly, an equilibrium will establish itself: but we never know what the particular prices or wages are which would exist if the market were to bring about such an equilibrium.

One need not be a prophet to be aware of impending dangers. An accidental combination of experience and interest will often reveal events to one man under aspects which few yet see.

... that order generated without design can far outstrip plans men consciously contrive

Least of all shall we preserve democracy or foster its growth if all the power and most of the important decisions rest with an organization far too big for the common man to survey or comprehend.

Whatever men live for, today most live only because of the market order.

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.

The Germans would appear as the disturbers of peace, as they already do to some people, merely because they were the first to take the path along which all the others were ultimately to follow.

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

Socialism can only be put into practice only by methods which most socialists disapprove.

When it becomes dominated by a collectivist creed, democracy will inevitably destroy itself.

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.

[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.

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

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

In government, the scum rises to the top.

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

Nothing distinguishes more clearly conditions in a free country from those in a country under arbitrary government than the observance in the former of the great principles known as the Rule of Law.

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

Nowhere has democracy ever worked well without a great measure of local self-government, providing a school of political training for the people at large as much as for their future leaders.

You can have economic freedom without political freedom, but you cannot have political freedom without economic freedom.

Personally I prefer a liberal dictator to democratic government lacking liberalism.

We did not realise how fragile our civilisation was.