Friedrich Hayek Quotes

I am still puzzled why those in the United States who truly believe in liberty should not only have allowed the left to appropriate this almost indispensable term but should even have assisted by beginning to use it themselves as a term of opprobrium. This seems to be particularly regrettable because of the consequent tendency of many true liberals to describe themselves as conservatives.

It's very important to say that what I mean when I say 'liberal' is liberal in the 19th-century British sense. Pro-market, pro-individual, freedom, pro-openness. Not the American sense.

I'm a classic English liberal. A classical liberal, which is different to the modern interpretation of liberal in America.

The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of 'liberalism,' they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.

'Socialist' is the nastiest thing you can say about an American politician in some quarters.

The liberals think government exists to fix what's wrong with America. They find fault with our Constitution, our economic model and our core values. We disagree with the premise of their argument. We believe there's nothing wrong with America that an extra dose of freedom won't cure.

I would say I'm a 19th-century liberal, possibly even an 18th-century one.

In American politics, 'Europe' is usually a code word for 'big government.'

I want to reclaim 'liberal.' I'm a liberal, and I think most Americans are liberals.

The label “liberalism” or “liberal” has been hijacked over the last century so that now it means something that's a 180 degree opposite of what it originally meant.

Liberals are the enemy of ordinary Americans!

The conservatives see man as a body freely roaming the earth, building sand piles or factories—with an electronic computer inside his skull, controlled from Washington. The liberals see man as a soul freewheeling to the farthest reaches of the universe—but wearing chains from nose to toes when he crosses the street to buy a loaf of bread.

Well-intentioned liberalism always leads to progressivism. There's no choice there. Once that action is taken the only thing you can run on is totalitarianism - you have no choice.

The terms 'progressive' and 'liberal' have virtually nothing to do with each other anymore. And if you are a classical liberal, you certainly aren't a leftist.

I believe you can divide the people in to two basic groups, those who believe government is a necessary good and those who believe it is a necessary evil, those who want government to take care of them, those who want government to leave them alone.

Nelson Mandela stood up against a great injustice and was willing to pay a huge price for that. That's the reason he's mourned today, because of that struggle that he performed I mean, what he was advocating for was not necessarily the right answer, but he was fighting against some great injustice, and I would make the argument that we have a great injustice going on right now in this country with an ever-increasing size of government that is taking over and controlling people's lives, and Obamacare is front and center in that.

If the 19th [century] was the century of the individual (liberalism means individualism), you may consider that this is the "collective" century, and therefore the century of the state.

In a democracy, you believe it or not; in a dictatorship, you believe it or else.

If you think shrinking government and getting it less involved in your life is a hallmark of tyranny it is only because you are either grotesquely ignorant or because you subscribe to a statist ideology that believes the expansion of the state is the expansion of liberty.

I mean, I'm not a, you know, a fraidy cat. I mean, I am truly concerned in this country that we are moving towards fascism.

Whenever all men are...hastening to be slaves or tyrants we make Liberalism the prime bogey.

In the 1950s and '60s the [democrat] party included many obviously earnest and thoughtful liberals who supported goals that were in line with and expressions of serious beliefs. They believed that America was an exceptional country.

There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism - by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide.

If they [liberals] didn't believe we were mean spirited they couldn't stay liberal. They have to believe they mean better than us, but we don't have to believe that we mean better than them. We have to believe that we do better than them. We measure morality by what happens not what is intended.

Different political views, even if they're all liberal, in the sense of supporting liberal constitutional democracy, undoubtedly have some notion of the common good in the form of the means provided to assure that people can make use of their liberties, and the like.