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"Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom."
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"Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good."

"There shall be no end to the government of God."

"There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you."

"The ugliest government is the one which is spreading fear to its own people! The finest government is the one which encourages its own people to criticize the government harshly."

"The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government."

"The instant formal government is abolished, society begins to act. A general association takes place, and common interest produces common security."

"There is probably a perverse pride in my administration... that we were going to do the right thing, even if short-term it was unpopular. And I think anybody who's occupied this office has to remember that success is determined by an intersection in policy and politics and that you can't be neglecting of marketing and P.R. and public opinion."

"An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination."

"Democracy is not so much a form of government as a set of principles."

"There are no doubts that western governments are willfully inducing radiation sickness into segments of their city populations."
Explore more quotes by Friedrich August von Hayek

"I do not think it is an exaggeration to say history is largely a history of inflation, usually inflations engineered by governments for the gain of governments."

"Even the striving for equality by means of a directed economy can result only in an officially enforced inequality - an authoritarian determination of the status of each individual in the new hierarchical order."

"If we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion."

"I have arrived at the conviction that the neglect by economists to discuss seriously what is really the crucial problem of our time is due to a certain timidity about soiling their hands by going from purely scientific questions into value questions."

"To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society entirely to our liking, knowledge which in fact we do not possess, is likely to make us do much harm."

"We have indeed at the moment little cause for pride: as a profession we have made a mess of things."

"This means that to entrust to science - or to deliberate control according to scientific principles - more than scientific method can achieve may have deplorable effects."

"Why should we, however, in economics, have to plead ignorance of the sort of facts on which, in the case of a physical theory, a scientist would certainly be expected to give precise information?"
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