Friedrich Hayek Quotes

Power can shape 'truth,' but not forever.

Palestinian propagandists can say and do anything they please without concern for the truth, in the belief that if they repeat it often enough it will simply become the truth.

It's all a sham: I have seen, and I know firsthand, indeed from my own pen, how the organized Right has sabotaged not only journalism but also democracy and truth.

I know every politician spins the truth a little.

The truth is not wonderful enough to suit the newspapers; so they enlarge upon it, and invent ridiculous embellishments.

Unfortunately in this country we now have a demagogue ... one that is reckless with the truth.

When governments state that certain events have not happened, and yet we have the victims before us to testify that they did, government loses its credibility, and it loses its authority. We see before us today governments that lack natural authority and have to make up for that by the use of force. They do not have the support of the people because they are not trusted by the people. We hear many fine words seeking national unity, cooperation and harmony, yet, almost in the same breath orders are given to military units to shoot civilians, protesters are rounded up, many disappear, many are tortured. No government which governs by the use of force can survive except by force. There is no going back because force begets force and the perpetrators of crimes live in fear that they might become victims in their turn.

Official truth is not actual truth.

Shows itself in the notion that what may be objectively true may in the mouth of certain people become false.

One policeman may be a friend, but two are the Law.

If nature does not ratify law, then all the virtues may lose their sway.

Ah me! why may not love and life be one?

Preaching doom and gloom has been beneficial to the political class. They use it to gain more power and control.

Kids, Madison Avenue is lying to you. Your parents are lying to you. The president is lying to you.

Great men may jest with saints; 'tis wit in them; But, in the less foul profanation.

You need everyone to get together and just believe in it, and lead by example that it is possible to be outside the system, and that's really super-f - king hard, and I'm sure there's some geniuses out there who can achieve it.

May all that is not love within us and without be healed. May all that is love within us and without us be revealed. May every day of our lives be lived in love.

The multitude which is not brought to act as a unity, is confusion. That unity which has not its origin in the multitude is tyranny.

An orderly society cannot exist if every man may decide which laws he will obey.

I want to be with people who submerge in the task, who go into the fields to harvest and work in a row and pass the bags along, who are not parlor generals and field deserters but move in a common rhythm when the food must come in or the fire be put out. The work of the world is common as mud. Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust. But the thing worth doing well done has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.

Martin Buber said he sensed a rising hunger for relatedness Men would no longer rise in rebellion merely against one oppressor or another but against the distortion of a great yearning, 'the effort towards community.'

The harder you work, the more confidence you get. But you may be working hard on something that is false.

It was possible, maybe, to have facts in your mind that weren't facts at all. You could build a whole life's story on false assumptions. You could make truths out of untruths and untruths out of truths. Until you spoke them, really said them out loud or checked for sure, you may not have known which were which.

I'm telling you a lie in a vicious effort that you will repeat my lie over and over until it becomes true

The obvious reductio ad absurdum is Holocaust deniers: Should their perspective be provided, for "balance," any time someone writes about the Holocaust?