8 Friedrich Hayek Quotes on Rights

Friedrich Hayek quotes on rights

5. I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.

13. Personally I prefer a liberal dictator to democratic government lacking liberalism.

    Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.

41. We must face the act that the preservation of individual freedom is incompatible with a full satisfaction of our views of distributive justice.

48. Our faith in freedom does not rest on the foreseeable results in particular circumstances, but on the belief that it will, on balance, release more forces for the good than for the bad...Freedom granted only when it is known beforehand that its effects will be beneficial is not freedom.

83. It is not democracy but unlimited government that is objectionable, and I do not see why the people should not learn to limit the scope of majority rule as well as that of any other form of government. At any rate, the advantages of democracy as a method of peaceful change and of political education seem to be so great compared with those of any other system that I can have no sympathy with the antidemocratic strain of conservatism. It is not who governs but what government is entitled to do that seems to me the essential problem.

132. A society that does not recognise that each individual has values of his own which he is entitled to follow can have no respect for the dignity of the individual and cannot really know freedom.

     Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.

135. 'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.

     Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.

157. The power which a multiple millionaire, who may be my neighbour and perhaps my employer, has over me is very much less that which the smallest functionaire possess who wield the coercive power of the state, and on whose discretion it depends whether and how I am able to be allowed to live or work.