Friedrich August von Hayek

“The argument for liberty is not an argument against organization... but an argument against all exclusive, privileged, monopolistic organization, against the use of coercion to prevent others from trying to do better.”

“The case for individual freedom rests largely on the recognition of the inevitable ignorance of all of us.”

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

“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.”

“I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.”

“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

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

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

“The more the state 'plans' the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.”

“From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position.”

“Money is one of the greatest instruments of freedom ever invented by man.”

“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.”

“To be controlled in our economic pursuits means to be controlled in everything.”

“The price system is just one of those formations which man has learned to use after he had stumbled upon it without understanding it.”

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

“What is called 'social justice' is a mirage.”