Friedrich Hayek Quotes

If you understand this refrain, you're gonna' understand everything I want to say to you today. It has four parts: Creativity and innovation always builds on the past. The past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it ., Free societies enable the future by limiting this power of the past ., Ours is less and less a free society.

It's politely assumed that democracy is a means of containing and restraining violence. But violence comes not from genes but from ideas.

Who controls the present controls the past. There's a power structure, if you like, between the present and the past and the future, and that's what I'm interested in.

If repression has indeed been the fundamental link between power, knowledge, and sexuality since the classical age, it stands to reason that we will not be able to free ourselves from it except at a considerable cost.

A man is the prisoner of his power.

Creativity and innovation always builds on the past. The past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it. Free societies enable the future by limiting this power of the past. Ours is less and less a free society.

To whom you tell your secrets, to him you resign your liberty

Many people say that government is necessary because some men cannot be trusted to look after themselves, but anarchists say that government is harmful because no men can be trusted to look after anyone else.

He who has the greatest power put into his hands will only become the more impatient of any restraint in the use of it.

The exercise of authority is odious, and they who know how to govern, leave it in abeyance as much as possible.

Magic is wild, dangerous stuff. You never realize how useful limitations are until it's much too late.

Technologies can be liberating, but it can also be a tool of coercion and control.

Good order results spontaneously when things are let alone

Economics is concerned with what emerges, not what anyone intended.

We fear the past, present and future. We fear the unknown, we fear not having enough, losing what we have, not having what we want. We fear what will become of us and those that we care for. We fear what others think of us and what they don't think of us. We fear, fear, fear and therefore we are controllable through the manipulation of all that we fear. The present War on Terror is the War of Fear. No Fear, no control.

Free people can treat each other justly, but they can't make life fair. To get rid of the unfairness among individuals, you have to exercise power over them. The more fairness you want, the more power you need. Thus, all dreams of fairness become dreams of tyranny in the end.

In my judgment an organic machine new to nature never arises, since it always contains an infinity of organs so that it can express, in its own way, the whole universe; indeed, it always contains all past and present times.

Well, I must be patient; there is no fettering of authority.

Power said to the world, "You are mine." The world kept it prisoner on her throne. Love said to the world, "I am thine." The world gave it the freedom of her house.

That order generated without design can far outstrip plans men consciously contrive.

The horse that drawes after him his halter, is not altogether escaped.

Since the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to allow them liberty, how comes it to pass that the tendencies of organizers are always good?

If no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capcity to govern someone else.

It has to be very tight to seem loose.