Friedrich Hayek

The case for individual freedom rests largely upon the recognition of the inevitable and universal ignorance of all of us concerning a great many of the factors on which the achievements of our ends and welfare depend.

All political theories assume…that most individuals are very ignorant. Those who plead for liberty differ…in that they include among the ignorant themselves as well as the wisest.

Economic control…is the control of the means for all our ends. And whoever has control of the means must also determine which ends are to be served.

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.

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.

Liberty is not merely one particular value…it is the source and condition of most moral values. What a free society offers to the individual is much more than what he would be able to do if only he were free.

You never need an argument against the use of violence, you need an argument for it.

You don’t get to be a respected intellectual by uttering truisms in monosyllables.

A ‘rogue state’ is a state that defies international laws and conventions, does not consider itself bound by the major treaties and conventions, World Court decisions-in fact, anything except the interests of its own leadership, the forces around the leadership that dominate policy.

We don’t want an America that is closed to the world. What we want is a world that is open to America.

A business or a big corporation is a fascist structure internally. Power is at the top. Orders go from top to bottom. You either follow the orders or get out.

China’s refusal to accept opium from Britain’s Indian colony was denounced by John Quincy Adams as a violation of the Christian principle of ‘love thy neighbor’ and ‘an enormous outrage upon the rights of human nature, and upon the first principles of the rights of nations’.

I addressed directly with President Putin the issue of Russian interference in our elections. I felt this was a message best delivered in person. Spent a great deal of time talking about it. And President Putin may very well want to address it, and very strongly, because he feels very strongly about it, and he has an interesting idea.

A consistent anarchist must oppose private ownership of the means of production and the wage slavery which is a component of this system, as incompatible with the principle that labor must be freely undertaken and under the control of the producer.

French intellectual life has, in my opinion, been turned into something cheap and meretricious by the ‘star’ system. It is like Hollywood. Thus we go from one absurdity to another – Stalinism, existentialism. Lacan, Derrida – some of them obscene ( Stalinism), some simply infantile and ridiculous ( Lacan, Derrida). What is striking, however, is the pomposity and self-importance, at each stage.

Let’s not talk about Communism. Communism was just an idea, just pie in the sky.

Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

The substance of the eminent Socialist gentlemen’s speech is that making a profit is a sin. It is my belief that the real sin is taking a loss!

Descriptive grammar is an attempt to give an account of what the current system is for either a society or an individual, whatever you happen to be studying.

It’s the first time in American history that a candidate [Sanders] probably could have won, if it hadn’t been for party managers who kept him out, with no funding from the corporate sector, and no funding from the wealthy, and no media support.

In sum, neoliberalism is the immediate and foremost enemy of genuine participatory democracy, not just in the United States but across the planet, and will be for the foreseeable future.