Quotes by Friedrich August von Hayek

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The mind cannot foresee its own advance.

Friedrich August von Hayek

It is rather a problem of how to secure the best use of resources known to any of the members of society, for ends whose relative importance only those individuals know.

Friedrich August von Hayek

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

Friedrich August von Hayek

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

Friedrich August von Hayek

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

Friedrich August von Hayek

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

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

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.

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.

Friedrich August von Hayek

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

Friedrich August von Hayek

Even the striving for equality by means of a directed economy can result only in an officially enforced inequality - an authoritarian determination of the status of each individual in the new hierarchical order.

Friedrich August von Hayek

We know: of course, with regard to the market and similar social structures, a great many facts which we cannot measure and on which indeed we have only some very imprecise and general information.

Friedrich August von Hayek

I regard it in fact as the great advantage of the mathematical technique that it allows us to describe, by means of algebraic equations, the general character of a pattern even where we are ignorant of the numerical values which will determine its pa...

Friedrich August von Hayek

To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society entirely to our liking, knowledge which in fact we do not possess, is likely to make us do much harm.

Friedrich August von Hayek

He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for ...

Friedrich August von Hayek

If most people are not willing to see the difficulty, this is mainly because, consciously or unconsciously, they assume that it will be they who will settle these questions for the others, and because they are convinced of their own capacity to do th...

Friedrich August von Hayek

Intellects whose desires have outstripped their understanding.

Friedrich August von Hayek

Our moral traditions developed concurrently with our reason, not as its product.

Friedrich August von Hayek

We have indeed at the moment little cause for pride: as a profession we have made a mess of things.

Friedrich August von Hayek

It can hardly be denied that such a demand quite arbitrarily limits the facts which are to be admitted as possible causes of the events which occur in the real world.

Friedrich August von Hayek