Friedrich Hayek Quotes

It's hard to convince people that you're killing them for their own good.

The enemies of freedom do not argue; they shout and they shoot.

There are certain wicked people in the world that you can't deal with except by force.

Bigotry and intolerance, silenced by argument, endeavors to silence by persecution, in old days by fire and sword, in modern days by the tongue.

Fascism is fascism. Terrorism is terrorism. Oppression is oppression.

The use of force to liberate people is very different from the use of force to suppress or control them, or even to defeat them.

History’s most important lesson is that it has not been possible to make coercion compatible with the truth.

It was not the year of union rather the year of division and force and oppression and violence. The imamate became like the kingdom of Chosroes and the caliphate like the tyranny of Caesar.

Between the people and their enemies there can be nothing in common but the sword; we must govern by iron those who cannot be governed by justice; we must oppress the tyrant...

A lot of evil has been perpetrated in the name of confronting evil.

If any person has a good word for the previous government that is good enough for me to have him shot.

I've always identified [myself] with the warrior and good over evil, and you don't negotiate for good over evil, if you want peace and love, kill people that deny you that.

Fear has always been the driving force behind all dictators' repression.

Beware of those who would use violence, too often it is violence they want and neither truth nor freedom.

violence is an evil thing, but when the guns are all in the hands of the men without respect for human rights, then men are really in trouble.

[It is a basic principle of a tyrant] to unarm his people of weapons, money and all means whereby they resist his power.

Power is violence, its promise, its deed. Power cares nothing for reason, nothing for justice, nothing for compassion. It is, in fact, the singular abnegation of these things - once the cloak of deceits is stripped away, this one truth is revealed.

It is not conclusive proof of a doctrine's correctness that its adversaries use the police, the hangman, and violent mobs to fight it. But it is a proof of the fact that those taking recourse to violent oppression are in their subconscious convinced of the untenability of their own doctrines.

I not only weaken the opposition, I’m going to make them dead ... and if anyone is strong enough to try to hold a demonstration, I will beat all those dogs and put them in a cage.

People ask me if I would shoot and kill people, and I don't think I would.

The term 'just war' is an internal contradiction. War is inherently unjust, and the great challenge of our time is how to deal with evil, tyranny and oppression without killing huge numbers of people.

Yes, there are circumstances where a bloody suppression is justifiable and justified.

An autocratic system of coercion, in my opinion, soon degenerates. For force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels. For this reason I have always been passionately opposed to systems such as we see in Italy and Russia to-day.

Voting is merely a labor-saving device for ascertaining on which side force lies and bowing to the inevitable... It is neither more nor less than a paper representative of the bayonet, the bully, and the bullet.

The man who coerces another not to eat fish commits more violence than he who eats it.