Friedrich Hayek

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."

"Freedom cannot be preserved without a certain degree of civil order."

"The most powerful principle for the good is human freedom."

"It is the individual who is the ultimate source of all values."

"The facts of the physical world were thought by me to be directly accessible only to perception."

"To understand the limits of the possible, we must first transcend them."

"True liberalism seeks freedom for the individual as an end in itself."

"The use of mathematics has brought rigor to economics. Unfortunately, it has also brought mortis."

"We need to make a much greater effort to explain how the market economy works."

"The curious thing about the demand for equality is that the demand for it increases in proportion to the distance from equality."

"Probably nothing has done so much harm to the liberal cause as the wooden insistence of some liberals on certain rough rules of thumb."

"There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal."

"If we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object for one person does not constitute a reason for imposing it on all."

"The price system is the mechanism that performs all those functions."

"I am certain that nothing has contributed more to the corruption of science than the desire to make it purposeful."

"The real question of government versus markets is composed of many separate questions."

"Competition is the only form of organization which dispenses with the need for anybody to worship or trust anybody else."

"The great danger to the consumer from monopoly lies in the possible restriction of output."

"To be controlled in all the details which change from moment to moment is to lose all real freedom."

"A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither."

"The conflict between the idea that everybody should be made as comfortable as possible and the idea that people should bear the responsibility for their own welfare is becoming increasingly acute."

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

"Knowledge is power, but power is not knowledge."

"The curious fact is that while the Left accuses all others of fascism, it is they who are closest to fascism."

"There is perhaps no single factor which has contributed so much to material progress as the cumulative effect of small innovations."

"The principle of freedom has been the most revolutionary influence on human affairs."

"The most important thing the state can do is to get out of the way."

"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."

"The more we try to make the world comfortable, the more uncomfortable we make it."

"In the long run the market is the test of one's faith in the sacredness of one's convictions."