Hayek Quotes

“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. To the naive mind that can conceive of order only as the product of deliberate arrangement, it may seem absurd that in complex conditions order, and adaptation to the unknown, can be achieved more effectively by decentralizing decisions and that a division of authority will actually extend the possibility of overall order. Yet that decentralization actually leads to more information being taken into account.”
― Friedrich Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism

“The views of intellectuals influence the politics of tomorrow...What to the contemporary observer appears as the battle of conflicting interests has indeed often been described long before in a clash of ideas confined to narrow circles.”
― Friedrich Hayek

“With the growth of market individualism comes a corollary desire to look for collective, democratic responses when major dislocations of financial collapse, unemployment, heightened inequality, runaway inflation, and the like occur. The more such dislocations occur, the more powerful and internalized, Hayek insists, neoliberal ideology must become; it must become embedded in the media, in economic talking heads, in law and the jurisprudence of the courts, in government policy, and in the souls of participants. Neoliberal ideology must become a machine or engine that infuses economic life as well as a camera that provides a snapshot of it. That means, in turn, that the impersonal processes of regulation work best if courts, churches, schools, the media, music, localities, electoral politics, legislatures, monetary authorities, and corporate organizations internalize and publicize these norms.”
― William E. Connolly, The Fragility of Things: Self-Organizing Processes, Neoliberal Fantasies, and Democratic Activism

“Throughout his life Hayek wanted to affirm his identity with the classic liberal tradition, believing that the true cause of the crises leading to two world wars was the steady increase increase in the power of the state, and its misuse in the pursuit of unattainable goals. 'Social justice' was the name of one of these goals, and Hayek expressly dismissed the expression as a piece of deceptive Newspeak, used to advance large-scale injustice in the name of its opposite.”
― Roger Scruton, Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition

“Zwolennicy rynku używają niekiedy argumentu, że korupcja występująca w gospodarce centralnie planowanej niweczy w istocie wszelkie przewagi, które system ten mógłby posiadać. Ci sami dyskutanci nie rozpatrują jednak na ogół wpływu, jaki wywierają standardy moralne na funkcjonowanie gospodarki rynkowej. Nie może nas to dziwić, ponieważ gdyby zajęli się bliżej tą sprawą, to musieliby dojść do przekonania, że ograniczenie jednostkowych egoizmów jest zasadniczym spoiwem społeczeństwa. Zwolennicy Hayka i Miltona Friedmana wierzą, tak samo jak marksiści, iż jedno lekarstwo może zwalczyć wszelkie choroby; własność prywatna i wolny rynek spełniają w ich doktrynie taką samą rolę, jaką w marksizmie pełni kolektywizacja i centralne planowanie. (Maxa Webera olśnienia i pomyłki, ss. 174-175)”
― Stanislav Andreski, Max Weber's Insights and Errors

“But if those coming forward with elaborate plans for the “reformation” of society are not really interested in the cause of humanity, what does motivate them? Simply the desire for power: On this point Lewis is in emphatic agreement with both Hayek and Mises. Hayek: “[T]he desire to organize social life according to a single plan itself springs largely from a desire for power.” Mises: “Every dictator plans to rear, raise, feed and train his fellow citizens as the breeder does his cattle. His aim is not to make them happy but to bring them into a condition which renders him, the dictator, happy.”
― J.R.Nyquist

“The everyday practice of what is right is not derived from a rule, not only because the custom is inarticulable /in toto/, but also because a rule not summoned from custom cannot anticipate the unknowable local circumstances under which it might conflict with another rule subsumed within the larger community practice of what is right (69).”
― Bart J. Wilson, The Property Species: Mine, Yours, and the Human Mind

“On the more technical kind of economics my advance was impeded by my inadequate knowledge of mathematics which I had never found helpful in my work, even at such times as when I had temporarily mastered the particular techniques required, but felt not to be worth the effort to acquire real competence merely to be able to refute or criticize the work of others—as I now recognize, a serious mistake”
― Bruce Caldwell, Hayek: A Life, 1899–1950

“There was frequently a moral lesson lurking just below the surface in Hayek’s accounts, usually having to do with Keynes’s overweening self- confidence and the dangers of hubris. His retelling of their final conversation is illustrative. Hayek had asked Keynes whether he was at all concerned about the uses to which his disciples were putting his theories, and in particular, whether a theory that had made sense in “the age of plenty” of the 1930s might not stimulate inflation as the economy neared full employment. Keynes assured Hayek that were his theories ever to become harmful, he could turn public opinion against them like that, and snapped his fingers. Unfortunately, as Hayek concluded, “six weeks later he was dead”.”
― Bruce Caldwell, Hayek: A Life, 1899–1950

“A number of years ago, 1944, Friedrich Hayek wrote this very influential book, The Road to Serfdom. He worried that the creation of the welfare state, a strong government helping individuals would lead to authoritarianism. We now know that he was wrong. If we look around the world, populism, authoritarianism is associated not with government doing too much, but doing too little.

By doing too little, it has given rise to discontent that threatens our democracy and threatens our ability to respond to the major challenges that we face.”
― Joseph Stiglitz

“Who imagines that there exist any common ideals of distributive justice such as will make the Norwegian fisherman consent to forgo the prospect of economic improvement in order to help his Portuguese fellow, or the Dutch worker to pay more for his bicycle to help the Coventry mechanic, or the French. peasant to pay more taxes to assist the industrialisation of Italy?”
― Friedrich A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom

“When it becomes dominated by a collectivist creed, democracy will inevitably destroy itself.”
― F.A. Hayek