Margaret Thatcher on Friedrich Hayek

“All the general propositions favouring freedom I had … imbibed at my father's knee or acquired by candle-end reading of Burke and Hayek .."”

“For Dicey, writing in 1885, and for me reading him some seventy years later, the rule of law still had a very English, or at least Anglo-Saxon, feel to it. It was later, through Hayek's masterpieces "The Constitution of Liberty" and "Law, Legislation and Liberty" that I really came to think this principle as having wider application.”

“Our inspiration was less Rab Butler's Industrial Charter than books like Colm Brogan's anti-socialist satire, Our New Masters … and Hayek's powerful Road to Serfdom, dedicated to 'the socialists of all parties'. Such books not only provided crisp, clear analytical arguments against socialism, demonstrating how its economic theories were connected to the then depressing shortages of our daily lives; but by their wonderful mockery of socialist follies, they also gave us the feeling that the other side simply could not win in the end. That is a vital feeling in politics; it eradicates past defeats and builds future victories. It left a permanent mark on my own political character, making me a long-term optimist for free enterprise and liberty.”

“Hayek's analysis of the perils of the planned society and the command economy is, indeed, unrivalled. He shows how attempts to defy markets are doomed to be self-defeating. He warns us that beneath the seductive slogans and the simplistic targets of the utopians who promise heaven on earth there frequently lurks the reality of a totalitarian hell. He reminds us that we must value the habits, rules and institutions of liberty for their own sake if we are to enjoy for long the benefits that freedom brings. And all these messages are as relevant to our own age as when he first spoke to the West about that Road to Serfdom. Perhaps more so. This is because Hayek is still the preeminent modern philosopher of ordered liberty — something that in every continent is today under threat from dark forces of anarchy, hatred, revolution, fanaticism and violence. Against such ideologues, he encourages us to have faith in the peaceful, subtle processes by which people co-operate in fulfilling their requirements under a rule of law; to rely on an extended, spontaneous order; in short, to promote the system generally known as capitalism. Hayek is, therefore, the prophet not of doom and disaster, but of peace and plenty. His is a voice of wisdom for our time, and for all time. We should listen to him.”