Conservatism, though a necessary element in any stable society, is not a social program; in its paternalistic, nationalistic and power adoring tendencies it is often closer to socialism than true liberalism.
~ Friedrich Hayek

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There is, in a competitive society, nobody who can exercise even a fraction of the power which a socialist planning board would possess.
~ Friedrich Hayek

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To be controlled in our economic pursuits means to be always controlled unless we declare our specific purpose. Or, since when we declare our specific purpose we shall also have to get it approved, we should really controlled in everything.
~ Friedrich Hayek

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What our generation has forgotten is that 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. It is only because the control of the means of production is divided among many people acting independently that nobody has complete power over us, that we as individuals can decide what to do with ourselves.
~ Friedrich Hayek

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The more the state “plans” the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.
~ Friedrich Hayek

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The effect of the people’s agreeing that there must be central planning, without agreeing on the ends, will be rather as if a group of people were to commit themselves to take a journey together without agreeing where they want to go; with the result that they may all have to make a journey which most of them do not want at all.
~ Friedrich Hayek

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From the saintly and single-minded idealist to the fanatic is often but a step.
~ Friedrich Hayek

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The successful use of competition as the principle of social organization precludes certain types of coercive interference with economic life, but it admits of others which sometimes may very considerably assist its work and even requires certain kinds of government action. But there is good reason why the negative requirements, the points where coercion must not be used, have been particularly stressed.
~ Friedrich Hayek

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That democratic socialism, the great utopia of the last few generations, is not only unachievable, but that to strive for it produces something so utterly different that few of those who wish it would be prepared to accept the consequences, many will not believe until the connection has been laid bare in all its aspects.
~ Friedrich Hayek

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