Friedrich A. Hayek / 1899–1992 / Vienna, Austr0-Hungarian Empire (now Austria) / Economist, Political Philosopher
Centralized Control
Economic control is not merely control of a sector of human life which can be separated from the rest; it is the control of the means for all our ends. And whoever has sole control of the means must also determine which ends are to be served, which values are to be rated higher and which lower, in short, what men should believe and strive for.
Source: The Road to Serfdom (University of Chicago Press, 1944).
Coercion
Coercion occurs when one man’s actions are made to serve another man’s will, not for his own but for the other’s purpose.
Source: The Constitution of Liberty (University of Chicago Press, 1960).
Coercion implies . . . that I still choose but that my mind is made someone else’s tool, because the alternatives before me have been so manipulated that the conduct that the coercer wants me to choose becomes for me the least painful one.
Source: The Constitution of Liberty (University of Chicago Press, 1960).
Once wide coercive powers are given to governmental agencies for particular purposes, such powers cannot be effectively controlled by democratic assemblies.
Source: The Constitution of Liberty (University of Chicago Press, 1960).
If one objects to the use of coercion in order to bring about a more even or more just distribution, this does not mean that one does not regard these as desirable. But 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.
Source: The Constitution of Liberty (University of Chicago Press, 1960).
It is indeed probable that more harm and misery have been caused by men determined to use coercion to stamp out a moral evil than by men intent on doing evil.
Source: The Constitution of Liberty (University of Chicago Press, 1960).
Freedom and Governance
What a free society offers to the individual is much more than what he would be able to do if only he were free.
Source: The Constitution of Liberty (University of Chicago Press, 1960).
Our faith in freedom does not rest on the foreseeable results in particular circumstances, but on the belief that it will, on balance, release more forces for the good than for the bad … Freedom granted only when it is known beforehand that its effects will be beneficial is not freedom.
Source: The Constitution of Liberty (University of Chicago Press, 1960).
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.
Source: The Constitution of Liberty (University of Chicago Press, 1960).
Freedom and Justice
We must face the act that the preservation of individual freedom is incompatible with a full satisfaction of our views of distributive justice.
Source: Individualism and Economic Order (University of Chicago Press, 1948).
Freedom and Merit
A free society will not function or maintain itself unless its members regard it as right that each individual occupy the position that results from his action and accept it as due to his own action.
Source: The Constitution of Liberty (University of Chicago Press, 1960).
Freedom and Responsibility
Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions … Liberty and responsibility are inseparable.
Source: The Constitution of Liberty (University of Chicago Press, 1960).
Limits to Knowledge
The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.
Source: The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (University of Chicago Press, 1991).
The case for individual freedom rests chiefly on the recognition of the inevitable and universal ignorance of all of us concerning a great many of the factors on which the achievement of our ends and welfare depends.
Source: The Constitution of Liberty (University of Chicago Press, 1960).
No human mind can comprehend all the knowledge which guides the actions of society.
Source: The Constitution of Liberty (University of Chicago Press, 1960).
Most of the advantages of social life, especially in the more advanced forms that we call “civilization” rest on the fact that the individual benefits from more knowledge than he is aware of. It might be said that civilization begins when the individual in the pursuit of his ends can make use of more knowledge than he has himself acquired and when he can transcend the boundaries of his ignorance by profiting from knowledge he does not himself possess.
Source: The Constitution of Liberty (University of Chicago Press, 1960).
Majority and Minority
It is always from a minority acting in ways different from what the majority would prescribe that the majority in the end learns to do better.
Source: The Constitution of Liberty (University of Chicago Press, 1960).
The Tyranny of Experts
The first need is to free ourselves of that worst form of contemporary obscurantism which tries to persuade us that what we have done in the recent past was all either wise or unavoidable. We shall not grow wiser before we learn that much that we have done was very foolish.
Source: The Road to Serfdom (University of Chicago Press, 1944).
There is no reason why a man who has made a distinctive contribution to economic science should be omnicompetent on all problems of society—as the press tends to treat him till in the end he may himself be persuaded to believe.
Source: Speech, Nobel Prize banquet, Stockholm, Sweden, 1974.
I confess that I prefer true but imperfect knowledge, even if it leaves much indetermined and unpredictable, to a pretence of exact knowledge that is likely to be false.
Source: “The Pretence of Knowledge,” Nobel Prize Lecture, Stockholm, Sweden, December 11, 1974.
It would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that 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 regards as the public good.
Source: The Constitution of Liberty (University of Chicago Press, 1960).
Unlimited Government
The chief evil is unlimited government, and nobody is qualified to wield unlimited power.
Source: The Constitution of Liberty (University of Chicago Press, 1960).