Road To Serfdom Quotes

Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.

It seems to be almost a law of human nature that it is easier for people to agree on a negative program – on the hatred of an enemy, on the envy of those better off – than on any positive task.

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

In any society freedom of thought will probably be of direct significance for a small minority. But this does not mean that anyone is competent, or ought to have power, to select those to whom this freedom is to be reserved.

Morally and philosophically I find myself in agreement with virtually the whole of it: and not only in agreement with it, but in deeply moved agreement.

By giving the government unlimited powers, the most arbitrary rule can be made legal; and in this way a democracy may set up the most complete despotism imaginable.

The principle that the end justifies the means is in individualist ethics regarded as the denial of all morals. In collectivist ethics it becomes necessarily the supreme rule.

Ever read any [Friedrich] Hayek? He’s great. The Road To Serfdom is like… I’m not a big political-science reader, but I actually dog-eared my copy. I ended up going back through it and writing a prГ©cis, I was so impressed by this book. It’s all about what happens when government tries to make everything right.

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

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.

Where the sole employer is the state, [opposition] means death by slow starvation.

Socialism can only be put into practice only by methods which most socialists disapprove.

. . I think the Adam Smith role was played in this cycle i.e. the late twentieth century collapse of socialism in which the idea of free-markets succeeded first, and then special events catalyzed a complete change of socio-political policy in countries around the world by Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom.

The power which a multiple millionaire, who may be my neighbor 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 desecration it depends whether and how I am allowed to live or to work.

The system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not.

If most people are not willing to see the difficulty, this is mainly because, consciously or unconsciously, they assume that it will be they who will settle these questions for the others, and because they are convinced of their own capacity to do this.

The guiding principle that a policy of freedom for the individual is the only truly progressive policy remains as true today as it was in the nineteenth century.