{"author":"Friedrich A. Hayek","author_id":"Friedrich+A.+Hayek","total_quotes":39,"quotes":[{"text":"I was quite depressed two weeks ago when I spent an afternoon at Brentano's Bookshop in New York and was looking at the kind of books most people read. Once you see that you lose all hope.","author":"Friedrich A. Hayek","tags":["economics","politics"],"id":9315,"author_id":"Friedrich+A.+Hayek"},{"text":"Emergencies” have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have eroded.","author":"Friedrich A. Hayek","tags":["anarcho-capitalism","anarchy","ancap","austrian-school-of-economics","coercion","collectivism","free-markets","freedom","libertarian","liberty","nap","non-aggression-principle","politics","socialism","statism","taxation","theft","violence","voluntaryism"],"id":12785,"author_id":"Friedrich+A.+Hayek"},{"text":"The theories of the social sciences do not consist of “laws” in the sense of empirical rules about the behavior of objects definable in physical terms. All that the theory of the social sciences attempts is to provide a technique of reasoning which assists us in connecting individual facts, but which, like logic or mathematics, is not about the facts. It can, therefore, and this is the second point, never be verified or falsified by reference to facts.","author":"Friedrich A. Hayek","tags":["economics","empiricism","falsification","libertarianism","pseudoscience","reality","science"],"id":20507,"author_id":"Friedrich+A.+Hayek"},{"text":"It is true that the virtues which are less esteemed and practiced now--independence, self-reliance, and the willingness to bear risks, the readiness to back one's own conviction against a majority, and the willingness to voluntary cooperation with one's neighbors--are essentially those on which the of an individualist society rests. Collectivism has nothing to put in their place, and in so far as it already has destroyed then it has left a void filled by nothing but the demand for obedience and the compulsion of the individual to what is collectively decided to be good.","author":"Friedrich A. Hayek","tags":["economics"],"id":25891,"author_id":"Friedrich+A.+Hayek"},{"text":"Freedom to order our own conduct in the sphere where material circumstances force a choice upon us, and responsibility for the arrangement of our own life according to our own conscience, is the air in which alone moral sense grows and in which moral values are daily recreated in the free decision of the individual. Responsibility, not to a superior, but to one's own conscience, the awareness of a duty not exacted by compulsion, the necessity to decide which of the things one values are to be sacrificed to others, and to bear the consequences of one's own decision, are the very essence of any morals which deserve the name.","author":"Friedrich A. Hayek","tags":["economics"],"id":26618,"author_id":"Friedrich+A.+Hayek"},{"text":"The great misfortune of our generation is that the direction which by the amazing progress of the natural sciences has been given to its interests is not one which assists us in comprehending the larger process of which as individuals we form merely a part or in appreciating how we constantly contribute to a common effort without either directing it or submitting to orders of others.","author":"Friedrich A. Hayek","tags":["reason","science"],"id":37258,"author_id":"Friedrich+A.+Hayek"},{"text":"The mind can never foresee its own advance.","author":"Friedrich A. Hayek","tags":["advance","foresight","mind","the-constitution-of-liberty"],"id":91019,"author_id":"Friedrich+A.+Hayek"},{"text":"To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society entirely to our liking, knowledge which in fact we do not possess, is likely to make us do much harm.","author":"Friedrich A. Hayek","tags":["belief","harm","power","society"],"id":116895,"author_id":"Friedrich+A.+Hayek"},{"text":"It seems to be almost a law of human nature that it is easier for people to agree on a negative programme, on the hatred of an enemy, on the envy of those better off, than on any positive task. The contrast between the 'we' and the 'they', the common fight against those outside the group, seems to be an essential ingredient in any creed which will solidly knit together a group for common action. It is consequently always employed by those who seek, not merely support of a policy, but the unreserved allegiance of huge masses. From their point of view it has the great advantage of leaving them greater freedom of action than almost any positive programme.","author":"Friedrich A. Hayek","tags":["economics","politics","psychology","sociology"],"id":117043,"author_id":"Friedrich+A.+Hayek"},{"text":"The main cause of the ineffectiveness of British propaganda is that those directing it seem to have lost their own belief in the peculiar values of English civilization or to be completely ignorant of the main points on which it differs from that of other people. The Left intelligentsia indeed, have so long worshiped foreign gods that they seem to have become almost incapable of seeing any good in the characteristic English institutions and traditions. That the moral values on which most of them pride themselves are largely the product of the institutions they are out to destroy, these socialists cannot, of course, admit.","author":"Friedrich A. Hayek","tags":["economics","politics"],"id":133725,"author_id":"Friedrich+A.+Hayek"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":39,"pages":4,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}