Friedrich Hayek

Equality of the general rules of law and conduct…is the only kind of equality conducive to liberty and the only equality which we can secure without destroying liberty.

There is no justification for the belief that, so long as power is conferred by democratic procedure, it cannot be arbitrary…it is not the source but the limitation of power which prevents it from being arbitrary.

The chief evil is unlimited government…nobody is qualified to wield unlimited power.

It used to be the boast of free men that, so long as they kept within the bounds of the known law, there was no need to ask anybody’s permission or to obey anybody’s orders. It is doubtful whether any of us can make this claim today.

It is always from a minority acting in ways different from what the majority would prescribe that the majority in the end learns to do better.

Under the Rule of Law…the individual is free to pursue his personal ends and desires, certain that the powers of government will not be used deliberately to frustrate his efforts.

The events in Crimea themselves have nothing to do with what happened in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and other regions. In my opinion, when the world becomes unipolar, or when someone tries to make it so, then this one pole has the illusion that all issues can be settled through power. And only when there is a balance of power does the desire to negotiate appears.

Poor people are basically superfluous for wealth production, and therefore the wealthy want to get rid of them. The rich also frighten everyone else, because if you’re afraid of these people, then you submit to state authority.

The ferocity of the assault against labor by the U.S. business class is illustrated by Washington’s failure, for 60 years, to ratify the core principle of international labor law, which guarantees freedom of association.

It was sort of important for us not to deal with a specific policy change, or a specific sort of approach, but to deal with cultural change.

There are growing domestic social and economic problems, in fact, maybe catastrophes. Nobody in power has any intention of doing anything about them. If you look at the domestic programs of the administrations of the past ten years-I include here the Democratic opposition-there’s really no serious proposal about what to do about the severe problems of health, education, homelessness, joblessness, crime, soaring criminal populations, jails, deterioration in the inner cities – the whole raft of problems… In such circumstances you’ve got to divert the bewildered herd, because if they start noticing this they may not like it, since they’re the ones suffering from it. Just having them watch the Superbowl and the sitcoms may not be enough. You have to whip them up into fear of enemies. In the 1930s Hitler whipped them into fear of the Jews and gypsies. You had to crush them to defend yourselves. We have our ways, too. Over the last ten years, every year ot two, some major monster is constructed that we have to defend ourselves against.,

Citizenship means every four years you put a mark somewhere and you go home and let other guys run the world. It’s a very destructive ideology.

[on Jeremy Cobyn] It is a different type of Labour Party. Can it be taken back? I don’t know

When you chop wood, splinters fly

Hizbullah is not a militia.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

Imagine, a September 11 with weapons of mass destruction. It’s not 3,000. It’s tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children.

I say again that I am an atheist. I do not believe in God.

It is not heroes that make history, but history that makes heroes.

Why does the world dislike Russia? I do not think that we are unloved or considered to be ignorant.

For example, a US corporation that has an outlet in Puerto Rico may decide to take its profits in Puerto Rico, because of tax rebates. It shifts its prices around, using what’s called “transfer pricing,” so it doesn’t seem to be making a profit here.