Friedrich August von Hayek Quotes

• Intellects whose desires have outstripped their understanding.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Desires, Understanding

• 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.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Sufficient, Recognize, Free

• 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 this.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Questions, Convinced, Difficulty

• 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 particular manifestation.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Advantage, General, Technique

• I have arrived at the conviction that the neglect by economists to discuss seriously what is really the crucial problem of our time is due to a certain timidity about soiling their hands by going from purely scientific questions into value questions.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Questions, Problem, Really

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Think, Governments, Largely

• 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 his plants.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Topics in Knowledge

  Tags in Environment, Results

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

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Freedom, Effects

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Individual, Means, Determination

• ‘Emergencies’ have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Individual, Safeguards

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

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Government, Position

Friedrich August von Hayek (31)

Birth:	8th May, 1899
Death:	23rd March, 1992
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Economist, Philosopher

About

Friedrich August von Hayek was born in Vienna, Cisleithania, Austria-Hungary. He was an Austrian-born British economist and philosopher best known for his defense of classical liberalism. He shared the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Gunnar Myrdal for his "pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and ... penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena." He earned doctorates in law and political science from University of Vienna in 1921 and 1923. He spent most of his academic life at the London School of Economics, the University of Chicago, and the University of Freiburg. He wrote several books include: The Road to Serfdom, The Constitution of Liberty, Law, Legislation and Liberty, The Fatal Conceit, and Individualism and Economic Order. He received the US Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991 from President George H. W. Bush.

Related Authors

• Friedrich List
• George P. Shultz
• Douglass North
• Jeffrey Sachs
• Beatrice Potter Webb
• Nassau William Senior
• Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar
• Chester Irving Barnard
• Vince Cable
• Nicholas Stern

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 5th January

Births

• 1773 - Richard Heber
• 1923 - Samuel Cornelius Phillips
• 1928 - Walter F. Mondale
• 1931 - Robert Duvall
• 1909 - Stephen Cole Kleene

Deaths

• 2010 - Kenneth Noland
• 1988 - Pete Maravich
• 2003 - Roy Jenkins
• 1867 - Alexander Smith
• 1998 - Sonny Bono