Link Copied!
Friedrich Hayek Quotes (1899-1992)
Philosopher
-100px.jpg)
About Friedrich Hayek
Friedrich August von Hayek CH (8 May 1899 β 23 March 1992) was an Austrian, later British, economist and philosopher best known for his defense of classical liberalism. In 1974, Hayek shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (with Gunnar Myrdal) for his "pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and β¦ penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena". (Nobel Memorial Prize, 1974)
Best Friedrich Hayek Quotes
Shortest
Earliest
Explore our curated collection of the most famous and impactful Friedrich Hayek quotes.
βThe more the state "plans" the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.β
βWhat a free society offers to the individual is much more than what he would be able to do if only he were free.β
βJustice, like liberty and coercion, is a concept which, for the sake of clarity, ought to be confined to the deliberate treatment of men by other men.β
βAll economic activity is carried out through time. Every individual economic process occupies a certain time, and all linkages between economic processes necessarily involve longer or shorter periods of time.β
βA society that does not recognize that each individual has values of his own which he is entitled to follow can have no respect for the dignity of the individual and cannot really know freedom.β
βThe mechanism by which the interaction of democratic decisions and their implementation by the experts often produces results which nobody has desired is a subject which would deserve much more careful attention than it usually receives.β
βIf a big country like the United States did return to the gold standard, it would start a great deflation. Most likely the government couldn't stick to it for long. They'd switch the policy to some halfway measure like a gold exchange standard.β
βOn the scale on which [tax cutting] is being tried, I'm a little apprehensive. I'm all for reduction of government expenditures but to anticipate it by reducing the rate of taxation before you have reduced expenditure is a very risky thing to do.β
βThe treatment of the South Tirolese by the Italians, even before the advent of Fascism worse than anything known until then in modern times in any part of Western or Central Europe, has made the population more unwilling than ever to endure it further.β
βI don't believe that we shall ever have a good money again before we take the thing out of the hands of government, and since we can't take them violently out of the hands of government, all we can do is by some sly roundabout way introduce something they can't stop.β
βWhen I look at the world, I sometimes feel that here in Germany one may still be in some sort of lifeboat that can hope to keep afloat when the rest of the world goes bust. German and Switzerland and perhaps Austria and Belgium have the few relatively stable currencies in the world.β
βMay one who has devoted a large part of his life to the study of the history and the principles of liberalism point out that a party that keeps a socialist government in power clearly has lost all title to the name βLiberalβ. Certainly no liberal can in future vote βLiberalβ.β
βShe was a very good-looking woman, and extremely intelligent. But she wasnβt really very female; she had too much of a male intelligence.β
βWe do not owe our morals to our intelligence: we owe them to the fact that some groups uncomprehendingly accepted certain rules of conduct β the rules of private property, of honesty, and of the family β that enabled the groups practising them to prosper, multiply, and gradually to displace the others.β
βI feared that such a prize, as I believe is true of the activities of some of the great scientific foundations, would tend to accentuate the swings of scientific fashion. This apprehension the selection committee has brilliantly refuted by awarding the prize to one whose views are as unfashionable as mine are.β
βI donβt believe weβre in for a crash now. It's much more likely that government will just conceal the continuation of inflation by price controls. But if anything is worse than an open inflation, itβs a repressed inflation. What youβre likely to get is not a violent deflation but increasing stagnation of productivity.β
βPerhaps I'm unrealistic. As long as people do not fully realize the danger of inflation, they may well pressure for more inflation as a short-term remedy for evils. Though we may well be driven into more, until people have learned the lesson, but that means that inflation may still do more of a great deal of harm, before it will be cured.β
Friedrich Hayek Quotes by Topic
Find exactly what you are looking for by browsing this categorized list of Friedrich Hayek quotes by topic.
Friedrich Hayek on Democracy 9 quotes
βIf democracy is a means rather than an end, its limits must be determined in the light of the purpose we want it to serve.β
Friedrich Hayek on Liberty 7 quotes
βThe great aim of the struggle for liberty has been equality before the law.β
Friedrich Hayek on Government 6 quotes
βOnce wide coercive powers are given to governmental agencies for particular purposes, such powers cannot be effectively controlled by democratic assemblies.β
Friedrich Hayek on Spontaneous order 6 quotes
βIt would be no exaggeration to say that social theory begins withβand has an object only because ofβthe discovery that there exist orderly structures which are the product of the action of many men but are not the result of human design.β
Friedrich Hayek on Extended order 6 quotes
βIt is no accident that many abstract rules, such as those treating individual responsibility and several property, are associated with economics. Economics has from its origins been concerned with how an extended order of human interaction comes into existence through a process of variation, winnowing and sifting far surpassing our vision or our capacity to design.β
Friedrich Hayek on Free society 5 quotes
βWe must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage.β
Friedrich Hayek on Freedom 5 quotes
βI 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.β
Friedrich Hayek on Social influence 4 quotes
βThe growth of ideas is an international process, and only those who fully take part in the discussion will be able to exercise a significant influence.β
Friedrich Hayek on Socialism 3 quotes
βSocialism has taught many people that they possess claims irrespective of performance, irrespective of participation. In the light of the morals that produced the extended order of civilisation, socialists in fact incite people to break the law.β
Friedrich Hayek on Knowledge 2 quotes
βNo human mind can comprehend all the knowledge which guides the actions of society.β
Friedrich Hayek on Attitude 2 quotes
βConservatism proper is a legitimate, probably necessary, and certainly widespread attitude of opposition to drastic change.β
Friedrich Hayek on Economics 2 quotes
βThe curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.''β
What Friedrich Hayek Said About Others
Discover personal opinions Friedrich Hayek shared regarding contemporaries.
Friedrich Hayek on David Hume 7 quotes
βHume has come closer to a critique of rationalism than any other author I kn[o]w. Again and again I've found in Hume statements of ideas which I had already independently arrived at. I am impressed especially with Hume's account of the formation of social institutions of all kinds.β
Friedrich Hayek on Ludwig von Mises 4 quotes
βThere is no single man to whom I owe more intellectually, even though he [Mises] was never my teacher in the institutional sense of the word.β
Friedrich Hayek on Joseph Schumpeter 4 quotes
βSchumpeterβs attempt to prove his assertion to the layman characteristically begins by assuming that βmeans of production are present in given and, for the moment, unalterable quantitiesβ. He does not explain to whom these quantities are βgivenβ, that is, known, nor how much about their various attributes and potentialities anybody knows.β
Friedrich Hayek on Alexis de Tocqueville 3 quotes
βNobody saw more clearly than de Tocqueville that democracy as an essentially individualist institution stood in an irreconcilable conflict with socialism.β
Friedrich Hayek on William Ewart Gladstone 3 quotes
β[I]n the last twenty years England has travelled on the German path... Perhaps nothing shows this change more clearly than that, while there is no lack of sympathetic treatment of Bismarck in contemporary English literature, the name of Gladstone is rarely mentioned by the younger generation without a sneer over his Victorian morality and naive utopianism.β
Friedrich Hayek on Milton Friedman 3 quotes
βYou see, in one respect, Milton Friedman is still a Keynesian, not on monetary theory, but on methodology. Keynes, very much against his own intentions, and it still dominates the economic theory, and Milton Friedman is one of the apostles of macroeconomics, which has the effect that while we completely agree on general economic policy, we wholly disagree on monetary policy, because his theory is based on supposed regularities between statistical magnitudes.β
Friedrich Hayek on Bernard Mandeville 3 quotes
βI do not intend to pitch my claim on behalf of Mandeville higher than to say that he made Hume possible. It is indeed my estimate of Hume as perhaps the greatest of all modern students of mind and society which makes Mandeville appear to me so important. It is only in Hume's work that the significance of Mandeville's efforts becomes wholly clear, and it was through Hume that he exercised his most lasting influence. Yet to have given Hume some of his leading conceptions seems to me sufficient title for Mandeville to qualify as a master mind.β
Friedrich Hayek on John Stuart Mill 3 quotes
βIt was only the 'marginal revolution' of the 1870s that produced a satisfactory explanation of the market processes that Adam Smith had long before described with his metaphor of the 'invisible hand', an account which, despite its still metaphorical and incomplete character, was the first scientific description of such self-ordering processes. James and John Stuart Mill, by contrast, were unable to conceive of the determination of market values in any manner other than causal determination by a few preceding events, and this inability barred them, as it does many modern 'physicalists', from understanding selfsteering market processes. [...] John Stuart Mill perhaps played the most important role in this connection. He had early put himself under socialist influence, and through this bias acquired a great appeal to 'progressive' intellectuals, establishing a reputation as the leading liberal and the 'Saint of Rationalism'. Yet he probably led more intellectuals into socialism than any other single person: fabianism was in its beginnings essentially formed by a group of his followers.β
Friedrich Hayek on Thomas Babington Macaulay 2 quotes
βMacaulay's success in making the achievement of the constitutional struggles of the past once more a living possession of every educated Englishman is now rarely remembered.β
Friedrich Hayek on Carl Schmitt 2 quotes
βThe conduct of Carl Schmitt under the Hitler regime does not alter the fact that, of the modern German writings on the subject, his are still among the most learned and perceptive.β
Friedrich Hayek on Ludwig Erhard 2 quotes
βMay I tell you the story of when I last spoke to Dr Ludwig Erhard? We were alone for a moment and he turned to me and said, βI hope you don't misunderstand me when I speak of a social market economy (sozialen Marktwirtschaft). I mean by that that the market economy as such is social, not that it needs to be made social.ββ
Friedrich Hayek on Thomas Sowell 2 quotes
βFor many years the term Austrian school in the United States was synonymous with Misesβs disciples. The first outstanding pupils to find themselves highly respected were Murray N. Rothbard and Israel M. Kirzner. In the 1970s and 1980s the group greatly expanded, with the present most representative work probably being done by Thomas Sowell.β
Quotes About Friedrich Hayek
Gain deeper perspective through quotes about Friedrich Hayek from others.
Martin Anderson on Friedrich Hayek
βThe most important player on Ronald Reagan's economic team is Ronald Reagan. The person most responsible for creating the economic program that came to be known as Reaganomics is Reagan himself. For over twenty years he observed the American economy, read and studied the writings of some of the best economists in the world, including the giants of the free market economy β Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman β and he spoke and wrote on the economy, going through the rigorous mental discipline of explaining his thoughts to others. Over the years he made all the key decisions on the economic strategies he finally embraced. He always felt comfortable with his knowledge of the field and he was in command all the way.β
Perry Anderson on Friedrich Hayek 3 quotes
βAt Chicago, Hayek put aside his more technical economic work for the development of a social and political theory that became in time the most ambitious and complete synthesis to emerge from the ranks of the post-war Right. Among its themes β the overriding significance of the rule of law, the need for social inequality, the function of unreflective tradition, the value of a leisured class β were many cultivated by Strauss across the campus. Neither thinker, however, ever referred to the other. Did temperamental antagonism, or intellectual indifference, dictate the silence? Whatever the case, latent tensions of outlook between them were to find expression in due course. Schmitt, on the other hand, was never far from Hayek's mind β standing for the prime example of a skilled jurist whose sophistry helped to destroy the rule of law in Germany, yet a political theorist whose stark definitions of the nature of sovereignty and the logic of party, at any rate, had to be accepted.β
Dick Armey on Friedrich Hayek
β[Estonian Prime Minister] Mart Laar came to my office the other day to recount his country's remarkable transformation. He described a nation of people wh are harder-working, more virtuous β yes, more virtuous, because the market punishes immorality β and more hopeful about the future than they've ever been in their history. I asked Mr. Laar where his government got the idea for these reforms. Do you know what he replied? He said, "We read Milton Friedman and F. A. Hayek".β
Kenneth Arrow on Friedrich Hayek 2 quotes
βYes. I read that paper carefully a few years ago and think it is incoherent because he stresses the idea people can only know their local thing. He doesnβt ever answer why the systemβs price conveys the correct global information. In the Walras/Pareto story you do wind up with the correct informationβsubject to the appropriate assumptionsβbut Hayek doesnβt like that story. There are cases in game theory where local connections can actually cause a faster diffusion of ideas, and a faster convergence to Nash equilibrium than reactions to the population as a whole, but thatβs not in Hayek.β
W. Brian Arthur on Friedrich Hayek
βRight after we published our first findings, we started getting letters from all over the country saying, "You know, all you guys have done is rediscover Austrian economics" β¦ I admit I wasn't familiar with Hayek and von Mises as the time. But now that I've read them, I can see that this is essentially true.β
Roger E. Backhouse on Friedrich Hayek
βAs the title of his 1941 book indicates, the theory of capital lay at the heart of his theory of the cycle. The reason is that he attributes the cycle not to changes in aggregate demand, or even to changes in the quantity of capital, but to changes in the structure of production and hence the structure of the capital stock. In this, his theory was highly unusual: one of the reasons for his failure to engage more effectively with Keynes was the latterβs inability to see how the theory of capital could be of any importance for the cycle. Because the theory of capital is so central, and because it is so complex, it needs to be explained carefully. After that, the rest of his theory falls into place comparatively easily.β
Peter Berger on Friedrich Hayek
βF. A. Hayek, probably the most prominent advocate of capitalism in the present period would not quite agree with Smith's notions of what is natural, but his defense of capitalism is indirect by reference to its linkage with liberty, and he explicitly rejected the idea that a legitimating concept of justice is relevant to the operations of a market system.β
Abram Bergson on Friedrich Hayek
βIt may not be amiss to seen in my calculations of comparative productivity [between entrepreneurial economics and communist economies] verification of a prescient forecast [made by Hayek in 1935 in his essay "The Present State of the Debate".].β
Mark Blaug on Friedrich Hayek 2 quotes
βThere were many Hayeks: Hayek, the political scientist; Hayek, the economist; Hayek, the philosopher of social science; Hayek, the psychologist. Even in these different roles, he played many parts.β
Peter Boettke on Friedrich Hayek
βHayekβs research programme is grounded in the teaching of Adam Smith and Carl Menger, who sought to understand social order not as the result of conscious design, but as the unintended consequences of individual human action. In addition to the emphasis on spontaneous order, Hayek learned from Menger that individual human action is guided by the subjective valuations of individuals, and that the relevant valuation that individuals make is on the marginal unit of the good or service that is the object of deliberation. Throughout Hayekβs career the puzzle of how a social system can transform the individual subjective perceptions of some into useful information for others so they may co-ordinate their actions to produce an overall social order which yields benefits far greater than any individual in the system intended was at the centre of his research efforts.β
Peter J. Boettke on Friedrich Hayek
βHayekβs reasons for holding that planning cannot work are not limited to the problem that the information required for the task of coordinating the plans of a multitude of individuals is too vast to organize effectively. The knowledge utilized within the market by entrepreneurs does not exist outside that local context and thus cannot even be organized in principle. It is not that planners would face a complex computational task; it is that they face an impossible task, because the knowledge required is not accessible to them no matter what technological developments may come along to ease the computational burden.β
James M. Buchanan on Friedrich Hayek 3 quotes
βI did not call him "Fritz." To me he remained always "Professor Hayek," despite his own graciousness in treating me as a peer. I shall not attempt to evaluate Professor Hayek's monumental contribution to our understanding of the events of this turbulent century, to the influence of his ideas on these events themselves or even to the development of economic theory in a strictly scientific sense.β
About Friedrich Hayek
Friedrich August von Hayek CH (8 May 1899 β 23 March 1992) was an Austrian, later British, economist and philosopher best known for his defense of classical liberalism. In 1974, Hayek shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (with Gunnar Myrdal) for his "pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and β¦ penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena". (Nobel Memorial Prize, 1974)