Friedrich Hayek Quotes

Physics is the only profession in which prophecy is not only accurate but routine.

The laws of nature are constructed in such a way as to make the universe as interesting as possible.

But nature did not deem it her business to make the discovery of her laws easy for us.

The laws of nature are the rules according to which the effects are produced; but there must be a cause which operates according to these rules. The laws of navigation never navigated a ship. The rules of architecture never built a house.

I agree with the realistic Irishman who said he preferred to prophesy after the event.

Certain signs are the forerunners of certain events.

Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, religion no longer offers an explanation for anything important.

People are entirely too disbelieving of coincidence. They are far too ready to dismiss it and to build arcane structures of extremely rickety substance in order to avoid it. I, on the other hand, see coincidence everywhere as an inevitable consequence of the laws of probability, according to which having no unusual coincidence is far more unusual than any coincidence could possibly be.

Of course, the laws of science contain no matter and have no energy either and therefore do not exist except in people's minds. It's best to be completely scientific about the whole thing and refuse to believe in either ghosts or the laws of science. That way you're safe. That doesn't leave you very much to believe in, but that's scientific too.

Minds vary in sensitiveness and in self-power, as bodies do in susceptibility of attraction and repulsion. When, when shall we learn that they are governed by laws as inexorable as physical laws, and that a man can as easily refuse to obey what has power over him as a steel atom can resist the magnet?

Tis a short sight to limit our faith in laws to those of gravity, of chemistry, of botany, and so forth.

All things obey fixed laws.

It does not say in the Bible that all laws of nature are expressible linearly!

It is natural to men to judge of things less known, by some similitude they observe, or think they observe, between them and things more familiar or better known. In many cases, we have no better way of judging. And, where the things compared have really a great similitude in their nature, when there is reason to think that they are subject to the same laws, there may be a considerable degree of probability in conclusions drawn from analogy.

Science is prediction, not explanation.

A rational prediction has an explanation based on theory.

On any occasion when one can discover the cause of events, one should not resort to the gods.

Coming events cast their shadows before.

It affords a violent prejudice against almost every science, that no prudent man, however sure of his principles, dares prophesy concerning any event, or foretell the remote consequences of things.

That very law which moulds a tear And bids it trickle from its source,- That law preserves the earth a sphere, And guides the planets in their course.

When something happens people didn't predict, they find ways to explain it as if it were predictable.

Every phenomenon, however trifling it be, has a cause, and a mind infinitely powerful, and infinitely well-informed concerning the laws of nature could have foreseen it from the beginning of the ages. If a being with such a mind existed, we could play no game of chance with him; we should always lose.

We don't gaze into a crystal ball. I do not believe that we predict things. I think political science is bad at prediction. I think what we really do well is in a number of instances where politics matters, we can do a better job of tell you what is happening now, than other people. So, we can look at Syria today. We can look at the Eurozone today. And we can look at areas where politics is a driver and we can give you a pretty good sense in those areas of here is how to understand today.

Science is the knowledge of constant things, not merely of passing events, and is properly less the knowledge of general laws than of existing facts.

The laws of Congress and the laws of physics have grown increasingly divergent, and the laws of physics are not likely to yield.