Friedrich Hayek
Champion of classical liberalism, Road to Serfdom
Most quoted
"The marvel is that in a case like that of a scarcity of one raw material, without an order being issued, without more than perhaps a handful of people knowing the cause, tens of thousands of people whose identity could not be ascertained by months of investigation, are made to use the material or its products more sparingly."
— from The Use of Knowledge in Society, 1945
"I am convinced that if it were the result of deliberate human design, and if the people guided by the price changes understood that their decisions have significance far beyond their immediate aim, this mechanism would have been acclaimed as one of the greatest triumphs of the human mind."
— from The Use of Knowledge in Society, 1945
"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 trying to do better."
— from The Constitution of Liberty, 1960
All quotes by Friedrich Hayek (235)
The only way to make a better world is to make better individuals.
The market is not a perfect mechanism, but it is the best we have.
The true source of wealth is not material resources, but human ingenuity.
The greatest good for the greatest number is a meaningless phrase if it means that the rights of the individual can be sacrificed for the sake of the collective.
The more we rely on government, the less we rely on ourselves.
The free society is a society of constant change and adaptation.
The greatest danger to freedom is not the bad intentions of evil men, but the good intentions of well-meaning men who do not understand the consequences of their actions.
The market is a process, not a state of affairs.
The only way to achieve prosperity is through free markets and limited government.
The state should be a referee, not a player.
The more we try to plan, the more we destroy the spontaneous order of society.
The ultimate test of a free society is how it treats its minorities.
The true function of law is to enable individuals to pursue their own ends, not to dictate those ends.
The economic problem is not how to get the most out of given resources, but how to discover what the resources are and how they can be best used.
The more complex the society, the more dependent it is on the spontaneous order of the market.
The only way to avoid the tyranny of the majority is to protect the rights of the individual.
I am more and more convinced that the great error of our time is the belief that we can consciously control everything.
Socialism is a system of ideas which, if consistently applied, would destroy the very foundations of a free society.
The ultimate source of all wealth is the human mind.
The great tragedy of our age is that we have come to believe that we can make the world a better place by force.
Contemporaries of Friedrich Hayek
Other Economicss born within 50 years of Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992).