“It is true that the virtues which are less esteemed and practiced now–independence, self-reliance, and the willingness to bear risks, the readiness to back one’s own conviction against a majority, and the willingness to voluntary cooperation with one’s neighbors–are essentially those on which the of an individualist society rests. Collectivism has nothing to put in their place, and in so far as it already has destroyed then it has left a void filled by nothing but the demand for obedience and the compulsion of the individual to what is collectively decided to be good.”
Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom
“Probably it is true enough that the great majority are rarely capable of thinking independently, that on most questions they accept views which they find ready-made, and that they will be equally content if born or coaxed into one set of beliefs or another. In any society freedom of thought will probably be of direct significance only 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. It certainly does not justify the presumption of any group of people to claim the right to determine what people ought to think or believe.”
Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom
“From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time”
Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution Of Liberty
“The argument for liberty is not an argument against organization, which is one of the most powerful tools human reason can employ, but an argument against all exclusive, privileged, monopolistic organization, against the use of coercion to prevent others from doing better.”
Friedrich Hayek
“It is one of the saddest spectacles of our time to see a great democratic movement support a policy which must lead to the destruction of democracy and which meanwhile can benefit only a minority of the masses who support it. Yet it is this support from the Left of the tendencies toward monopoly which make them so irresistible and the prospects of the future so dark.”
Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom
“Above all other spheres of human life, the Devil claims politics for his own.” C.S. Lewis
Admin- Thank you so much for the introduction to Hayek, The Road to Serfdom has been the most influential work I have read since The Creature from Jekyll Island or Drug War 10 years ago. Friedrich’s linkage of Socialism and Fascism was thorough and clear, dispelling years of propagandized educational framework portraying Fascism as exclusively “Right Wing”. In retrospect it is possible this underemphasis of socialism in National Socialism was purposeful to distract most from the preferred vehicle to be used on The Road to Serfdom.
“To make a totalitarian system function efficiently, it is not enough that everybody should be forced to work for the same ends. It is essential that the people should come to regard them as their own ends.” Hayek p.171
“Few discoveries are more irritating than those which expose the pedigree of ideas” Lord Acton, quoted by Hayek in his intro.
“The control of the production of wealth is the control of human life itself.” Hilaire Belloc, quoted by Hayek, chapter 7, Economic Control and Totalitarianism.
“In a Country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.” Leon Trotsky(1937), quoted by Hayek, chapter 9, Security and Freedom.