Friedrich Hayek Quotes

Supply and demand eventually rebalance. We've seen this again and again and again.

We like to think that a free market's greatest strength is its self-corrective nature.

We know, in other words, the general conditions in which what we call, somewhat misleadingly, an equilibrium will establish itself: but we never know what the particular prices or wages are which would exist if the market were to bring about such an equilibrium.

The state has an active role to play in ensuring that there is equilibrium between the constituent parts of the economy, the consumers and the producers.

I'm not speaking in favor of killing innovation. I'm speaking in favor of centrist use of the market, which involves necessarily a considerable degree of regulation. Markets by themselves will get themselves inevitably into inequality and into their own destruction. It will happen again and again.

Demand and supply are the opposite extremes of the beam, whence depend the scales of dearness and cheapness; the price is the point of equilibrium, where the momentum of the one ceases, and that of the other begins.

The equilibrium between supply and demand is achieved only through a reaction against the upsetting of the equilibrium.

What we call the market is really a democratic process involving millions, and in some markets billions, of people making personal decisions that express their preferences. When you hear someone say that he doesn't trust the market, and wants to replace it with government edicts, he's really calling for a switch from a democratic process to a totalitarian one.

Is the economy something organic or is it something engineered? I think it's closer to the organic. You harm it by artificially suppressing volatility in it.

The natural price, therefore, is, as it were, the central price, to which the prices of all commodities are continually gravitating.

Young people increasingly have become subject to an oppressive disciplinary machine that teaches them to define citizenship through the exchange practices of the market and to follow orders and toe the line in the face of oppressive forms of authority. They are caught in a society in which almost every aspect of their lives is shaped by the dual forces of the market and a growing police state.

If we are going to have a Fed, it should not fall into the tyranny of experts with the a fatal conceit that a few wise people can determine interest rates. Interest rates should be driven by the market, and people's time preference, and we see these boom-bust cycles.

What we're trying to look for is a process that is not responding to political pressures, but one that is responding to economic reality, because I do believe ... that it's in the best interest of the Chinese people to allow a market-based currency.

Art is only worth what people will pay for it. Artists do not get paid by the hour.

If libertarianism were easy to explain, and it weren't easy to exaggerate the effects of libertarianism, I think it would have been done already. Many many very intelligent people have applied themselves to crafting an agenda that people could grab ahold of. But the problem of course is that libertarianism isn't political. It is kind of anti-political. It wants to take a lot of things out of the political arena.

In the market economy the price that is offered is counted upon to produce the result that is sought.

A well-designed welfare state can actually encourage people to take chances with their jobs and be more, not less, open to changes.

We are coming to see that there should be no stifling of labor by capital, or of capital by labor; and also that there should be no stifling of labor by labor, or of capital by capital.

If no one consumes these products, people will stop roducing them. They will not build it if you didn't come.

It's not government that makes business successful. It's not government investments that makes businesses grow and hire people.

Capitalism tries for a delicate balance: It attempts to work things out so that everyone gets just enough stuff to keep them from getting violent and trying to take other people’s stuff.

Capitalism is the only society in human history in which neither tradition nor conscious direction supervises the total effort of the community; it is the only society in which the future, the needs for tomorrow, are entirely left to an automatic system.

The marketplace is a wondrous institution. It harnesses the self-interest of each of us and puts it to work for the benefit of all. And it does so without intruding upon our desires, our privacy, or our freedom. It is regulation by reality, not by coercion.

I think almost every economist would agree that government gets itself in trouble when it tries to interfere with voluntary behavior.

If you let markets - in general, my belief is that if you let markets give you information, they'll give you the information rather than artificially prop up everything.