Road To Serfdom Quotes:

The guiding principle that a policy of freedom for the individual is the only truly progressive policy remains as true today as it was in the nineteenth century.

- Friedrich August von Hayek

source: "The Road to Serfdom". Book by Friedrich Hayek. Chapter 16: "Conclusion", 1944.

topic: Progressive, Individual, Road To Serfdom

From the saintly and single-minded idealist to the fanatic is often but a step.

- Friedrich August von Hayek

source: "The Road to Serfdom". Book by Friedrich Hayek. Chapter 4: "The 'Inevitability' of Planning", 1944.

topic: Steps, Idealist, Road To Serfdom

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.

- Lord Acton

topic: Wisdom, Freedom, Mean, Absolute Power, Power Corrupts

Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.

- Alexis de Tocqueville

source: "Discours prononcé à l'assemblée constituante le 12 Septembre 1848 sur la question du droit au travail". Oeuvres complètes, Volume IX, p. 546, 1866.

topic: Patriotic, Equality, Differences, Servitude, Liberal Democracy

The more the state "plans" the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.

- Friedrich August von Hayek

source: 1944 The Road to Serfdom.

topic: Planning, Individual, States, Road To Serfdom

By giving the government unlimited powers, the most arbitrary rule can be made legal; and in this way a democracy may set up the most complete despotism imaginable.

- Friedrich August von Hayek

topic: Government, Giving, Democracy, Road To Serfdom, Unlimited Power

It seems to be almost a law of human nature that it is easier for people to agree on a negative program - on the hatred of an enemy, on the envy of those better off - than on any positive task.

- Friedrich August von Hayek

topic: Law, People, Envy, Road To Serfdom

Socialism can only be put into practice only by methods which most socialists disapprove.

- Friedrich August von Hayek

topic: Practice, Politics, Socialism, Road To Serfdom

Two-thirds of a century after [The Road to Serfdom] got written, hindsight confirms how inaccurate its innuendo about the future turned out to be.

- Paul Samuelson

topic: Two, Hindsight, Century, Innuendo, Road To Serfdom

The power which a multiple millionaire, who may be my neighbor and perhaps my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest "functionaire" possesses who wields the coercive power of the state, and on whose desecration it depends whether and how I am allowed to live or to work.

- Friedrich August von Hayek

topic: Liberty, May, Libertarian, Road To Serfdom

Economic control is not merely control of a sector of human life that can be separated from the rest; it is the control of the means for all our ends.

- Ludwig von Mises

topic: Mean, Economic, Ends, Road To Serfdom

What our generation has forgotten is that the system of private property is the most important guarantee of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not. It is only because the control of the means of production is divided among many people acting independently that nobody has complete power over us, that we as individuals can decide what to do with ourselves.

- Friedrich August von Hayek

source: "The Road to Serfdom". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Ch. 7 : Economic Control and Totalitarianism, 1940 - 1943.

topic: Mean, Our Generation, People, Productions, Private Property

The principle that the end justifies the means is in individualist ethics regarded as the denial of all morals. In collectivist ethics it becomes necessarily the supreme rule.

- Friedrich August von Hayek

source: "The Road to Serfdom". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Ch. 10 : Why The Worst Get On Top, 1940 - 1943.

topic: Mean, Liberty, Principles, Ends Justify The Means, Road To Serfdom

. . 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

.. the publication of Friedrich A. von Hayek's The Road to Serfdom in 1944 is rightly seen as the first shot in the intellectual battle that was to turn the tide in favor of conservatism i.e. non-statist liberalism .

- E. J. Dionne

topic: Hayek, Von Hayek, Road To Serfdom

We shall not grow wiser before we learn that much that we have done was very foolish.

- Friedrich August von Hayek

source: "The Road to Serfdom". Book by Front Cover Friedrich August Hayek, 1944.

topic: Stupid, Done, Foolish, Road To Serfdom

Once you admit that the individual is merely a means to serve the ends of the higher entity called society or the nation, most of those features of totalitarianism which horrify us follow of necessity

- Friedrich August von Hayek

topic: Mean, Individual, Ends, Road To Serfdom

In any society freedom of thought will probably be of direct significance for a small minority. But this does not mean that anyone is competent, or ought to have power, to select those to whom this freedom is to be reserved.

- Friedrich August von Hayek

topic: Mean, Doe, Minorities, Road To Serfdom

Economic control is not merely control of a sector of human life which can be separated from the rest; it is the control of the means for all our ends. And whoever has sole control of the means must also determine which ends are to be served, which values are to be rates higher and which lower, in short, what men should believe and strive for.

- Friedrich August von Hayek

source: "The Road to Serfdom". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Ch. 7 : Economic Control and Totalitarianism, 1940 - 1943.

topic: Believe, Mean, Men, Road To Serfdom

We shall all be the gainers if we can create a world fit for small states to live in.

- Friedrich August von Hayek

source: "The Road to Serfdom". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Ch. 15 : The Prospects of International Order, 1940 - 1943.

topic: World, Fit, States, Road To Serfdom

...in the negative part of Professor's Hayek's thesis there is a great deal of truth. It cannot be said too often - at any rate, it is not being said nearly often enough - that collectivism is not inherently democratic, but, on the contrary, gives to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish Inquisitors never dreamt of.

- George Orwell

source: George Orwell, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1998). “The Complete Works of George Orwell: I have tried to tell the truth, 1943-1944”

topic: Giving, Politics, Negative, Collectivism, Hayek

Where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation

- Leon Trotsky

topic: Mean, States, Sole, Starvation, Road To Serfdom

If most people are not willing to see the difficulty, this is mainly because, consciously or unconsciously, they assume that it will be they who will settle these questions for the others, and because they are convinced of their own capacity to do this.

- Friedrich August von Hayek

source: "The Road to Serfdom". Book by Friedrich von Hayek, Ch. 15 : The Prospects of International Order, 1940 - 1943.

topic: People, Assuming, Settling, Road To Serfdom

It is one of the most fatal illusions that, by substituting negotiations between states or organized groups for competition for markets or for raw materials, international friction would be reduced. This would merely put a contest of force in the place of what can only metaphorically be called the "struggle" of competition and would transfer to powerful and armed states, subject to no superior law, the rivalries which between individuals had to be decided without recourse to force.

- Friedrich August von Hayek

source: "The Road to Serfdom". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Ch. 15 : The Prospects of International Order, 1940 - 1943.

topic: Powerful, Struggle, Law, Road To Serfdom

Morally and philosophically I find myself in agreement with virtually the whole of it: and not only in agreement with it, but in deeply moved agreement.

- John Maynard Keynes

source: "The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes". Book by John Maynard Keynes, 1980.

topic: Philosophy, Book, Agreement, Road To Serfdom

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

If, of course, one builds into the concept of an 'individual' all that Professor Hayek does in his Road To Serfdom, Individualism and Economic Order and many other works, which is, to put it briefly, the whole of laisser-faire economic theory, then plainly man as such a programmed predator has very little interest in being fraternal, or very little chance.

- Bernard Crick

source: Bernard Crick (1993). “In Defense of Politics”, p.234, University of Chicago Press

topic: Men, Order, Doe, Hayek, Economic Order

It is a mark of how far we have gone on the road to serfdom that government allocation and rationing of oil is the automatic response to the oil crisis.

- Milton Friedman

topic: Government, Oil, Gone, Allocation, Road To Serfdom

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 Road To Serfdom was written during WWII, and basically it's an anti-Nazi, anti-communist thing, but also it's an anti-Conservative and anti-Labor-party thing aimed at the British. He was an Austrian, writing in Britain. And I feel like now, I guess, everybody pays lip service to libertarian - and, indeed, many conservative - ideas, and yet they keep moving forward with an increasingly bureaucratic state. It shows itself in all sorts of little ways.

- P. J. O'Rourke

source: Source: www.avclub.com

topic: Party, Moving, Writing, Road To Serfdom, Anti Communist