Friedrich Hayek Quotes

Now, there's a desire for order, authority coming from a feeling that society has gone too far to the side of individualism and liberalism.

The conservatives who say, "Let us not move so fast," and the extremists who say, "Let us go out and whip the world ," would tell you that they are as far apart as the poles. But there is a striking parallel: They accomplish nothing; for they do not reach the people who have a crying need to be free.

Even when men approve of the same arrangements, it must be asked whether they approve of them because they exist or because they are desirable in themselves. The common resistance to the collectivist tide should not be allowed to obscure the fact that the belief in integral freedom is based on an essentially forward-looking attitude and not on any nostalgic longing for the past or a romantic admiration for what has been.

Liberty must be allowed to work out its natural results; and these will, ere long, astonish the world.

True liberty in individuals consists in the enjoying of every right that will contribute to one's peace and happiness, so long as the exercise of such a privilege does not interfere with the same privilege in others.

The only thing for which we can combine is the underlying ideal of Socialism; justice and liberty. But it is hardly strong enough to call this ideal underlying. It is almost completely forgotten. It has been buried beneath layer after layer of doctnaire priggishness, party squabbles and half-backed progressivism until it is like a diamond hidden under a monition of dung. The job of the Socialist is to get it out again. Justice and liberty! Those are the words that have got to ring like a bugle across the world.

Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot un-educate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore. Cesar Chavez Address to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, Nov. 9, 1984

I've been a radical for a long time. I guess it's too bad. I'd be more marketable as a right-wing redneck.

Fanaticism, or, to call it by its milder name, enthusiasm, is only powerful and active so long as it is aggressive. Establish it firmly in power, and it becomes conservatism, whether it will or no.

Conservatism defends those coercive arrangements which a still-lingering savageness makes requisite. Radicalism endeavours to realize a state more in harmony with the character of the ideal man.

It's fine to be an activist, but you're not - if you're not putting up candidates, if you're not getting political, if you're not in your party, then you're probably not going to have long-term change. You will probably dissipate.

I've always believed the New Left is rank.

RADICALISM, n. The conservatism of to-morrow injected into the affairs of to-day.

I've been on the left of the Party since I joined it about 1934 and I haven't seen much reason for altering... I have always been a strong libertarian both inside the Labour Party and outside... what I want to seek to do over a period of course is to establish a Socialist society.

Any individual can contribute its own belief. And our society or even our government are made by the people. The people would have the final voice, but it requires each individual to act. If we don't act, then the result is very clear. So for too long Americans take liberty as granted. We think we are in the safe hand, the democracy and the liberty, which is not true. And it can be even getting much worse than today.

When I was born, I was colored. I soon became a Negro. Not long after that I was black. Most recently I was African-American. It seems we're on a roll here. But I am still first and foremost in search of freedom.

Being a conservative also used to involve the concept of people being free to do whatever they want to do, as long as it doesn't hurt somebody else. Conservatives used to be very libertarian.

Sometimes that irrational commitment to principle is what society needs to survive. Whenever you talk about radicalism, whenever you talk about activism, whenever you talk about progressive activity, that sort of moves the measure of liberty in human society forward, makes us all enjoy a better standard of liberty, it typically starts out criminal. It typically starts out a little bit shaky, and rather radical. And that's irrational to put yourself up to do that.

Radicals are only to be feared when you try to suppress them. You must demonstrate that you will use the best of what they offer.

(Punk rock is) lunging after some glimpse of a new and better world.

The way that you eliminate bad and ugly is either through activism and policy making that never tolerates evil -- instead of the liberal politically correct policy of accepting evil and accepting other points of views that destroy lives. We the thoughtful, productive people of American have got to take our freedom back.

What produces the general good is always terrible or seems bizarre when begun too soon. The Revolution must stop when it has perfected public happiness and liberty through the laws.

At a time when most movements that are thought to be progressive advocate further encroachments on individual liberty, those who cherish freedom are likely to expend their energies in opposition. In this they find themselves much of the time on the same side as those who habitually resist change.

Freedom may come quickly in robes of peace or after ages of conflict and war, but come it will, and abide it will, so long as the principles by which it was acquired are held sacred.

Resistance, which is the function of conservatism, is essential to orderly advance.