Friedrich Hayek Quotes

This is a free country, and to each their own.

To some, freedom means the opportunity to do what they want to do; to most it means not to do what they do not want to do. It is perhaps true that those who can grow will feel free under any condition.

I have one abiding religion-human liberty.

It is far better for a man to go wrong in freedom than to go right in chains.

Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men.

The characteristic feature of a free society is that it can function in spite of the fact that its members disagree in many judgments of value. Freedom really means the freedom to make mistakes.

Just as man must have liberty to think and speak, so he must have liberty in food, dress, and marriage, and in every other thing, so long as he does not injure others.

Freedom means the freedom to be stupid, and that's what I want.

I'm a big advocate of freedom: freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of thought.

The greatest right in the world is the right to be wrong.

A necessary corollary of giving individuals freedom to choose how to conduct their lives is acceptance of the fact that different individuals will make different choices.

Freedom of choice can harm no one.

... the greatest right in the world is the right to be wrong.

We have the right to be idiots.

Each of us wants to be free. But if we want to be free, we also need to appreciate that others also desire the same thing.

You either respect people's liberties, or you don't.

America is about choices, including those to live certain lifestyles.

The problem with this world is that there isn't enough liberty and freedom.

My feeling is that whatever people elect to do, insofar as they don't deny the rights of others, every effort should be made to defend their right to do it.

Liberty means that a man is recognized as free and treated as free by those who surround him.

I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them.

Why can't fellows be allowed to do what they like when they like and as they like, instead of other fellows sitting on banks and watching them all the time and making remarks and poetry and things about them?

I was not born to be forced.

Where are the heroes and the saints, who keep a clear vision of man's greatest gift, his freedom, to oppose not only the dictatorship of the proletariat, but also the dictatorship of the benevolent state, which takes possession of the family, and of the indigent, and claims our young for war?

What a free society offers to the individual is much more than what he would be able to do if only he were free.