Friedrich Hayek

Coercion is evil precisely because it…eliminates an individual as a thinking and valuing person and makes him a bare tool in the achievement of the ends of another.

The argument for liberty is…an argument…against the use of coercion to prevent others from doing better.

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.

Individual liberty…demonstrate[s] that some manners of living are more successful than others.

A society that does not recognize that each individual has values of his own which he is entitled to follow can have no respect for the dignity of the individual and cannot really know freedom.

Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences…Liberty and responsibility are inseparable.

Another way to solve the traffic problems of this country is to pass a law that only paid-for cars be allowed to use the highways.

The probability of apocalypse soon cannot be realistically estimated, but it is surely too high for any sane person to contemplate with equanimity.

The production of souls is more important than the production of tanks…. And therefore I raise my glass to you, writers, the engineers of the human soul.

But Klaus Barbie was basically small potatoes. Operation Paper Clip was a big operation, involving many top Nazis. We managed to get Walter Rauff, the guy who created the gas chambers, off to Chile. Others went to fascist Spain.

To those who oppose us, we say, ‘Strike the woman, and you strike the rock.’

Changing the big picture takes time.. and the best things to do is focus on the things that we can make in our lives if we’re doing all that. That becomes the collage of real change.

The Comrade Wolf knows whom to eat, as the saying goes. It knows whom to eat and is not about to listen to anyone, it seems.

They invited a large investor, Coca-Cola, to take over a plot of land in Pulkovo Heights and install high-capacity power and communications cables, hoping that other companies would follow suit. It worked. After Coca-Cola developed their piece of land, Gillette came, then Wrigley, and then some pharmaceutical companies. An economic zone thus took shape within the city, where total investment now exceeds half a billion dollars. Furthermore, with the Committee’s encouragement, the city’s infrastructure began to be modernized to create the conditions necessary for successful business. The first major deal that Putin supported was the completion of a fiber-optic cable to Copenhagen. This project had been initiated back in the Soviet era but never completed. Now the efforts were successful, providing St. Petersburg with world-class international telephone connections.

What we call intellectuals, they didn’t used to call them that, it’s a modern term. Historically, what you find is overwhelmingly this group is supportive of power. There’s usually a fringe of dissidents who are treated pretty badly.

So, sit down strikes in the 1930’s, organization of women’s consciousness-raising groups in the ’60’s and ’70’s, anti-war activism. I mean, all of these things work. They have to be done of course. They don’t happen by themselves.

If there was an observer on Mars, they would probably be amazed that we have survived this long.

Powerful states have quite typically considered themselves to be exceptionally magnificent and the United States is no exception to that. The basis for it is not very substantial, to put it politely.

They think because they have put my husband on an island that he will be forgotten. They are wrong. The harder they try to silence him, the louder I will become!

A certain inequality in regard to property still exists in a socialist society. But in a socialist society there is no unemployment, no exploitation, no oppression of nationalities.

The universities…are not independent institutions. There may be independent people scattered around in them but that is true of the media as well. And it’s generally true of corporations. It’s true of Fascist states, for that matter. But the institution itself is parasitic.