Friedrich Hayek

When 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.

Interview in Silver & Gold Report, Vol. V, No. 20, (Late October 1980), 1980

She was a very good-looking woman, and extremely intelligent. But she wasn’t really very female; she had too much of a male intelligence.

Conversation with Alchian (1978); About , published in Nobel Prize-Winning Economist: Friedrich A. von Hayek (1983), p. 363, 1978

Perhaps 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.

Interview on "Meet the Press" (22 June 1975), 1975

The assurance of a certain minimum income for everyone, or a sort of floor below which nobody need fall even when he is unable to provide for himself, appears not only to be a wholly legitimate protection against a risk common to all, but a necessary part of the Great Society in which the individual no longer has specific claims on the members of the particular small group into which he was born.

Law, Legislation and Liberty, volume 3, chapter 3, p. 55 (1979), 1973

Since the value of freedom rests on the opportunities it provides for unforeseen and unpredictable actions, we will rarely know what we lose through a particular restriction of freedom.

“Principles or Expediency?” Toward Liberty: Essays in Honor of Ludwig von Mises on the Occasion of his 90th Birthday (29 September 1971), 1971

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

p. 83., 1960

Justice, 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.

p. 99., 1960

A 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.

p. 79., 1960

I believe that the main lesson which our generation has learnt is that we must find a new limit for the activities of government, a limit which leaves ample scope for sensible experimentation but which secures the freedom of the individual as the mainspring of all social and political activity. The whole purpose of these lectures has been to suggest that we can find such a limit if we are willing to revive and develop the ancient ideal of the Rule of Law.

Lecture IV. The Decline of the Rule of Law - 25. The Task for Liberty- Loving Statesmen, 1955

The 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.

Lecture I. Freedom and the Rule of La A Historical Survey - 1. Principles and Drift in Democratic Process, 1955

Yet, though the French Revolution was so largely inspired by the ideal of the Rule of Law, it is questionable whether it really helped the advance towards that ideal. In its course too many different aspirations gained influence which it was difficult to reconcile with that ideal.

Lecture II. Liberalism and Administration: The Rechtsstaat - 7. Montesquieu, Rousseau, and the French Revolution, 1955

The more the state "plans" the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.

Chapter 6: Planning and the Rule of Law, 1944

The attack on economics sprang rather from a dislike of the application of scientific methods to the investigation of social problems. The existence of a body of reasoning which prevented people from following their first impulsive reactions, and which compelled them to balance indirect effects, which could be seen only by exercising the intellect, against intense feeling caused by the direct observation of concrete suffering, then as now, occasioned intense resentment.

"The Trend of Economic Thinking", lecture delivered at LSE on March 1, 1933, published in Economica (May 1933), 1933

All 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.

"Intertemporal Price Equilibrium and Movement in the Value of Money" (1928), 1928

The next time I met Ludwig Wittgenstein was in the spring of 1928 when the economist Dennis Robertson, who was taking me for a walk through the Fellows' Gardens of Trinity College, Cambridge, suddenly decided to change course because on the top of a little rise he perceived the form of the philosopher draped over a deckchair. He evidently stood rather in awe of him, and he did not wish to disturb him.

"Remembering My Cousin, Ludwig Wittgenstein", Encounter (August 1977). Page 21., 1928