Freedom necessarily means that many things will be done which we do not like. Friedrich August von Hayek More Quotes by Friedrich August von Hayek More Quotes From Friedrich August von Hayek I have come to feel strongly that the greatest service I can still render to my fellow men would be that I could make the speakers and writers among them thoroughly ashamed ever again to employ the term "social justice. Friedrich August von Hayek would-be justice men If the human intellect is allowed to impose a preconceived pattern on society, if our powers of reasoning are allowed to lay claim to a monopoly of creative effort... then we must not be surprised if society, as such, ceases to function as a creative force. Friedrich August von Hayek patterns effort creative No human mind can comprehend all the knowledge which guides the actions of society. Friedrich August von Hayek mind action knowledge You can have economic freedom without political freedom, but you cannot have political freedom without economic freedom. Friedrich August von Hayek economic political government Competition is like experimentation in science, a discovery process, and it must rely on the self interest of producers, it must allow them to use their knowledge for their purposes, because nobody else possesses the information Friedrich August von Hayek competition self discovery Socialism has never and nowhere been at first a working-class movement. It is by no means an obvious remedy for the obvious evil which the interests of that class will necessarily demand. It is a construction of theorists. Friedrich August von Hayek class philosophy mean Civilization enables us constantly to profit from knowledge which we individually do not possess and because each individual's use of his particular knowledge may serve to assist others unknown to him in achieving their ends that men as members of civilized society can pursue their individual ends so much more successfully than they could alone. Friedrich August von Hayek men civilization knowledge There is perhaps no single factor contributing so much to people's frequent reluctance to let the market work as their inability to conceive how some necessary balance, between demand and supply, between exports and imports, or the like, will be brought about without deliberate control. The conservative feels safe and content only if he is assured that some higher wisdom watches and supervises change, only if he knows that some authority is charged with keeping the change "orderly. Friedrich August von Hayek inability balance people 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. Friedrich August von Hayek majority views 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 Friedrich August von Hayek liberty names people The word "truth" itself ceases to have its old meaning. It describes no longer something to be found, with the individual conscience as the sole arbiter of whether in any particular instance the evidence (or the standing of those proclaiming it) warrants a belief; it becomes something to be laid down by authority, something which has to believed in the interest of unity of the organized effort and which may have to be altered as the exigencies of this organized effort require it. Friedrich August von Hayek unity effort may It may indeed prove to be far the most difficult and not the least important task for human reason rationally to comprehend its own limitations. It is essential for the growth of reason that as individuals we should bow to forces and obey principles which we cannot hope fully to understand, yet on which the advance and even the preservation of civilization depend. Friedrich August von Hayek growth important civilization We must show that liberty is not merely one particular value but that 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. We can therefore not fully appreciate the value of freedom until we know how a society of free men as a whole differs from one in which unfreedom prevails. Friedrich August von Hayek individuality appreciate men I use throughout the term 'liberal' in the original, nineteenth-century sense in which it is still current in Britain. In current American usage it often means very nearly the opposite of this. It has been part of the camouflage of leftish movements in this country, helped by muddleheadedness of many who really believe in liberty, that 'liberal' has come to mean the advocacy of almost every kind of government control. Friedrich August von Hayek mean believe country 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 support democracy dark All political theories assume, of course, that most individuals are very ignorant. Those who plead for liberty differ from the rest in that they include among the ignorant themselves as well as the wisest. Compared with the totality of knowledge which is continually utilized in the evolution of a dynamic civilization, the difference between the knowledge that the wisest and that the most ignorant individual can deliberately employ is comparatively insignificant. Friedrich August von Hayek differences political civilization 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. Friedrich August von Hayek government law country I must confess that if I had been consulted whether to establish a Nobel Prize in economics, I should have decidedly advised against it. Friedrich August von Hayek economics nobel should-have To undertake the direction of the economic life of people with widely divergent ideals and values is to assume responsibilities which commit one to the use of force; it is to assume a position where the best intentions cannot prevent one from being forced to act in a way which to some of those affected must appear highly immoral. This is true even if we assume the dominant power to be as idealistic and unselfish as we can possibly conceive. But how small is the likelihood that it will be unselfish, and how great are the temptations! Friedrich August von Hayek responsibility temptation people We must raise and train an army of fighters for freedom. Friedrich August von Hayek fighter raises army
