Friedrich Hayek Quotes

Our founding fathers undertook to create a country based on a notion of individual liberty because they were fleeing from countries in Europe where the government held too much power. They would look at what's happening today in John Ashcroft's Justice Department and say, 'Where have we gone wrong?'

There is no "slippery slope" toward loss of liberty, only a long staircase where each step down must first be tolerated by the American people and their leaders.

Once you give up rights, they're not going to give them back.

As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of persons and of property, liberty of conscience and of the press, it will be worth defending.

We cannot afford to walk down that dangerous path of government overstepping its boundaries into the most personal parts of our lives.

I can't in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building.

You talked about national identity cards and the terrorism bill. We have made a government that has grown used to viewing us as subjects, has grown used to seeing its role as commanding us.

Be most on guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.

My government will protect all liberties but one—the liberty to do away with other liberties.

People have rights and government must be kept from trampling on them.

The power of imprisonment … being the most natural and potent engine of arbitrary government, it is absolutely necessary to remove it from a government which is free and legal.

Civil Rights Program is a farce and a sham – an effort to set up a police state in the guise of liberty.

There are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

[Guarantees of freedom] will be found to consist in the highest protection of the individual and of society, chiefly against public power, because it is necessarily from this power that the greatest danger threatens the citizen, or that the most serious infringement of untrammeled action is to be feared.

It doesn’t keep us safe and it doesn’t keep us free if we give up our liberties to the government.

Since 9/11, our government has treated the Bill of Rights with about as much reverence as a “Keep Off the Grass” sign.

I can’t allow the U. S. Government to destroy privacy and basic liberties.

If you aren't free to protect yourself when the government puts its thumb on that freedom, then you're not free at all.

If the believers in liberty wish the principles of liberty taught, let them never intrust that instruction to any government; for the nature of government is to become a thing apart, an institution existing for its own sake, preying upon the people, and teaching whatever will tend to keep it secure in its seat.

The domestic NSA-led Surveillance State which Frank Church so stridently warned about has obviously come to fruition. The way to avoid its grip is simply to acquiesce to the nation's most powerful factions, to obediently remain within the permitted boundaries of political discourse and activism. Accepting that bargain enables one to maintain the delusion of freedom - "he who does not move does not notice his chains," observed Rosa Luxemburg - but the true measure of political liberty is whether one is free to make a different choice.

Americans who value freedom had better be more concerned about the gun control crowd than the criminals. The criminals want your money. The Neo-Totalitarians want your freedom.

The priceless heritage of our society is the unrestricted constitutional right of each member to think as he will. Thought control is a copyright of totalitarianism, and we have no claim to it.

For libertarians, freedom entails the right of people to live their lives any way they choose, so long as their conduct is peaceful. For conservatives, freedom entails the right of government to do just about anything it wants, even if its conduct is violent.

The lesson that Americans today have forgotten or never learned - the lesson which our ancestors tried so hard to teach - is that the greatest threat to our lives, liberty, property, and security is not some foreign government, as our rulers so often tell us. The greatest threat to our freedom and well-being lies with our own government!.

The Democratic Party will never desert the freedoms of our people under the guise of pretending to protect them.