The power which a multiple millionaire, who may be my neighbour and perhaps my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest functionaire possesses who wields the coercive power of the state, and on whose discretion it depends whether and how I am to be allowed to live or to work.
~ 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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Civilization as we know it is inseparable from urban life.
~ 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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It is indeed probable that more harm and misery have been caused by men determined to use coercion to stamp out a moral evil than by men intent on doing evil.
~ 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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It is only because the majority opinion will always be opposed by some that our knowledge and understanding progress.
~ 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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Once wide coercive powers are given to governmental agencies for particular purposes, such powers cannot be effectively controlled by democratic assemblies.
~ Friedrich Hayek
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