Friedrich Hayek Quotes:

Powerful government tends to draw into it people with bloated egos, people who think they know more than everyone else and have little hesitance in coercing their fellow man. Or as Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek said, "in government, the scum rises to the top".

- Walter E. Williams

topic: Powerful, Men, Thinking, Hayek, Powerful Government

[Friedrich] Hayek is not protesting that things like child labor and stuff are good. He's just trying to show that when government undertakes to make everything good for everybody, this is what happens. And he addresses it to socialists of all parties.

- P. J. O'Rourke

topic: Children, Party, Government, Hayek, Child Labor

At the heart of capitalism is the unification of knowledge and power. As Friedrich Hayek, the leader of the Austrian school of economics, put it, "To assume all the knowledge to be given to a single mind... is to disregard everything that is important and significant in the real world." Because knowledge is dispersed, power must be as well.

- George Gilder

topic: Real, Heart, School, Hayek, Real World

Ever read any [Friedrich] Hayek? He's great. The Road To Serfdom is like... I'm not a big political-science reader, but I actually dog-eared my copy. I ended up going back through it and writing a précis, I was so impressed by this book. It's all about what happens when government tries to make everything right.

- P. J. O'Rourke

topic: Dog, Book, Writing, Hayek, Friedrich Hayek

The government can always rescue the markets or interfere with contract law whenever it deems convenient with little or no apparent cost. (Investors believe this now and, worse still, the government believes it as well. We are probably doomed to a lasting legacy of government tampering with financial markets and the economy, which is likely to create the mother of all moral hazards. The government is blissfully unaware of the wisdom of Friedrich Hayek: "The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.")

- Seth Klarman

topic: Mother, Believe, Men, Hayek, Lasting Legacy

.. the most intelligent defender of capitalism in the modern period is Friedrich Hayek.

- Irving Kristol

topic: Intelligent, Hayek, Modern, Friedrich Hayek

In fact, a large part of what we think of as economic activity is designed to accomplish what high transaction costs would otherwise prevent or to reduce transaction costs so that individuals can negotiate freely and we can take advantage of that diffused knowledge of which Friedrich Hayek has told us.

- Ronald Coase

source: "The Institutional Structure of Production". Ronald Coase's Nobel Memorial Prize Lecture published in Ronald Coase "Essays on Economics and Economists" (p. 9), May 2, 1994.

topic: Thinking, Cost, Facts, Hayek, Friedrich Hayek

There is no figure who had more of an influence, no person had more of an influence on the intellectuals behind the Iron Curtain than Friedrich Hayek. His books were translated and published by the underground and black market editions, read widely, and undoubtedly influenced the climate of opinion that ultimately brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union.

- Milton Friedman

topic: Book, Iron, Black, Iron Curtain, Friedrich Hayek

. . I think the Adam Smith role was played in this cycle i.e. the late twentieth century collapse of socialism in which the idea of free-markets succeeded first, and then special events catalyzed a complete change of socio-political policy in countries around the world by Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom.

- Milton Friedman

topic: Country, Thinking, Ideas, Special Events, Hayek

Friedrich Hayek, who died on March 23, 1992 at age 92, was arguably the greatest social scientist of the twentieth century. By the time of his death, his fundamental way of thought had supplanted the system of John Maynard Keynes - his chief intellectual rival of the century - in the battle since the 1930s for the minds of economists and the policies of governments.

- Julian Simon

topic: Government, Mind, Intellectual, Keynes, Hayek

Friedrich Hayek .. seems to have been the first to postulate what is the core of this paper, namely, the idea of memory and perception represented in widely distributed networks of interconnected cortical cells. Subsequently this idea has received theoretical support, however tangential, from the fields of cognitive psychology, connectionism and artificial intelligence. Empirically, it is well supported by the physiological study and neuroimaging of working memory.

- Joaquin Fuster

source: "Network Memory". Trends in Neuroscience, Vol. 20, Issue 10, October 1997.

topic: Memories, Cells, Ideas, Hayek, Friedrich Hayek

Friedrich Hayek made the point that one of the keystones of socialism is the denial of individual responsibility. Thus, the crusade for socialism always included attacks on individual responsibility. For if individuals do not have free will, and are not responsible for their actions, then their lives must be controlled somehow - preferably by the state - according to the socialists. They must be regulated, regimented and controlled - for their own good.

- Thomas DiLorenzo

topic: Responsibility, Denial, Action, Individual Responsibility, Friedrich Hayek

Even philosophies who have denounced pseudosciences like psychoanalysis, have condoned pseudoscientific economic theories like neoclassical microeconomics. It is far safer and easier to criticize Freud and Jung than to criticize Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, because the latter are backed by political movements whereas the former are not.

- Mario Bunge

source: Source: deutsche-denker.de

topic: Philosophy, Political, Pseudoscience, Hayek, Microeconomics

The fall of the Berlin Wall did more for the progress of freedom than all of the books written by myself or Friedrich Hayek or others.

- Milton Friedman

source: Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

topic: Wall, Book, Fall, Friedrich Hayek, Berlin Wall

Friedrich Hayek is not an important figure in the history of macroeconomics.

- Paul Krugman

topic: Important, Hayek, Figures, Friedrich Hayek, Macroeconomics

But Friedman seemed to share Friedrich Hayek's extreme and inaccurate view that socialism of the sort that Britain embraced under the old Labour Party was incompatible with democracy, and I don't think that there is a good theoretical or empirical basis for that view. The Road to Serfdom flunks the test of accuracy of prediction!

- Richard Posner

topic: Party, Thinking, Views, Hayek, Friedrich Hayek

Even those who identify themselves as libertarians follow an overtly anti-rationalist philosophy, as even a brief acquaintance with the work of Friedrich Hayek should make clear. The argument against reason in this literature is straightforward: it is impossible for any individual to acquire enough reliable information to make a rational decision, any actions founded on rational thought will therefore be delusional, any attempts at reason should therefore regarded as dangerous, and all action should instead be guided by tradition.

- Philip E. Agre

topic: Philosophy, Decision, Literature, Hayek, Rational Decisions