Hayek Quotes & Sayings

There is only one ' principle that can preserve a free society: namely, the strict prevention of all coercion except in the enforcement of general abstract rules equally applicable to all. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

Our freedom of choice in a competitive society rests on the fact that, if one person refuses to satisfy our wishes, we can turn to another. But if we face a monopolist we are at his absolute mercy. And an authority directing the whole economic system of the country would be the most powerful monopolist conceivable ... it would have complete power to decide what we are to be given and on what terms. It would not only decide what commodities and services were to be available and in what quantities; it would be able to direct their distributions between persons to any degree it liked. — Friedrich Hayek

Life is tough; and if you have the ability to laugh at it, you have the ability to enjoy it. — Salma Hayek

The great aim of the struggle for liberty has been equality before the law. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

Nobody with open eyes can any longer doubt that the danger to personal freedom comes chiefly from the left. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

A mother is willing and capable of doing anything for her children. You can justify it if you do something for your children, especially as a Mexican mother. I don't know about some other nationalities, but the Mexican mothers are like that. They will do anything for their children. — Salma Hayek

If democracy is a means rather than an end, its limits must be determined in the light of the purpose we want it to serve. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

My heart has been stolen too - but I've gone and got it back every single time! — Salma Hayek

Few people ever have an abundance of choice of occupation. But what matters is that we have some choice, that we are not absolutely tied to a job which has been chosen for us, and that if one position becomes intolerable, or if we set our heart on another, there is always a way for the able, at some sacrifice, to achieve his goal. Nothing makes conditions more unbearable than the knowledge that no effort of ours can change them; and even if we should never have the strength of mind to make the necessary sacrifice, the knowledge that we could escape if we only strove hard enough makes many otherwise intolerable positions bearable. — Friedrich Hayek

Here effective competition can be created, it is a better way of guiding individual efforts than any other ... regards competition as superior not only because it is in most circumstances the most efficient method known but even more because it is the only method by which our activities can be adjusted to each other without coercive or arbitrary intervention of authority. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

The main cause of the ineffectiveness of British propaganda is that those directing it seem to have lost their own belief in the peculiar values of English civilization or to be completely ignorant of the main points on which it differs from that of other people. The Left intelligentsia indeed, have so long worshiped foreign gods that they seem to have become almost incapable of seeing any good in the characteristic English institutions and traditions. That the moral values on which most of them pride themselves are largely the product of the institutions they are out to destroy, these socialists cannot, of course, admit. — Friedrich Hayek

Among other grand achievements, F. A. Hayek had a remarkable career pointing out the flaws in collectivism. One of his keenest insights was that, paradoxically, any collectivist system necessarily depends on one individual (or small group) to make key social and economic decisions. In contrast, a system based on individualism takes advantage of the aggregate, or 'collective,' information of the whole society; through his actions each participant contributes his own particular, if incomplete, knowledge-information that could never be tapped by the individual at the head of a collectivist state. — Sheldon Richman

Never will man penetrate deeper into error than when he is continuing on a road which has led him to great success — Friedrich August Von Hayek

In any society freedom of thought will probably be of direct significance only for a small minority. — Friedrich Hayek

We must not forget that ... monetary policy all over the world has followed the advice of the stabilizers. It is high time that their influence, which has already done harm enough, should be overthrown. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

To act on behalf of a group seems to free people of many of the moral restraints which control their behaviour as individuals within the group. — Friedrich Hayek

I also have a film coming up called Breaking Up, and my part in that was not written for a Latina, and my character is not particularly pretty or sexy or exotic. — Salma Hayek

I think if you are young and you have children, you still have so much to prove. When you have children later in life, you lose a bit of that urge for working. — Salma Hayek

Unlike liberalism, with its fundamental belief in the long-range power of ideas, conservatism is bound by the stock of ideas inherited at a given time. And since it does not really believe in the power of argument, its last resort is generally a claim to superior wisdom, based on some self-arrogated superior quality. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

We know: of course, with regard to the market and similar social structures, a great many facts which we cannot measure and on which indeed we have only some very imprecise and general information. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

I think it's nice for women to try to be sexy for their man. — Salma Hayek

We must shed the illusion that we can deliberately 'create the future of mankind' — Friedrich August Von Hayek

They thought I was crazy in Mexico when I said, 'I'm going to Hollywood.' Nobody thought I could make it. — Salma Hayek

[The] impersonal process of the market ... can be neither just nor unjust, because the results are not intended or foreseen. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

But Friedman seemed to share Friedrich Hayek's extreme and inaccurate view that socialism of the sort that Britain embraced under the old Labour Party was incompatible with democracy, and I don't think that there is a good theoretical or empirical basis for that view. The Road to Serfdom flunks the test of accuracy of prediction! — Richard Posner

Friedrich Hayek made the point that one of the keystones of socialism is the denial of individual responsibility. Thus, the crusade for socialism always included attacks on individual responsibility. For if individuals do not have free will, and are not responsible for their actions, then their lives must be controlled somehow - preferably by the state - according to the socialists. They must be regulated, regimented and controlled - for their own good. — Thomas DiLorenzo

I have a ranch, which is my favorite place in the world. — Salma Hayek

It is rarely remembered now that socialism in its beginnings was frankly authoritarian. It began quite openly as a reaction against the liberalism of the French Revolution. The French writers who laid its foundation had no doubt that their ideas could be put into practice only by a strong dictatorial government. The first of modern planners, Saint-Simon, predicted that those who did not obey his proposed planning boards would be 'treated as cattle'. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

To combat the depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

When I first came to Hollywood I was told to go out with an agent because it was good for my career. So I went to a party with him because it was good for my 'career.' Well, he thought the whole thing was a big date. Needless to say, I was very upset. — Salma Hayek

I aim for a lifetime full of movies. — Salma Hayek

Human envy is certainly not one of the sources of discontent that a free society can eliminate. It is probably one of the essential conditions for the preservation of such a society that we do not countenance envy, not sanction its demands by camouflaging it as social justice, but treat it, in the words of John Stuart Mill, as 'the most anti-social and evil of all passions.' — Friedrich August Von Hayek

We did not realise how fragile our civilisation was. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

Here we have the heart of the difference between Hayek and Keynes: one knew that markets work to give us the best of all possible worlds, while governments create and exacerbate malfunctions; the other imagined that governments were somehow capable of both perceiving and correcting malfunctions by means of the printing press, provided the right technocrats are in charge. — Jeffrey Tucker

Is there a greater tragedy imaginable than that, in our endeavour consciously to shape our future in accordance with high ideals, we should in fact unwittingly produce the very opposite of what we have been striving for? — Friedrich August Von Hayek

Without the rich - without those who accumulated capital - those poor who could exist at all would be very much poorer indeed, scratching a livelihood from marginal lands on which every drought would kill most of the children they would be trying to raise. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

In the Small group the individual can know the effects of his actions on his several fellows, and the rules may effectively forbid him to harm them in any manner and even require him to assist them in specific ways. In the Great Society many of the effects of a person's actions on various fellows must be unknown to him. It can, therefore, not be the specific effects in the particular case, but only rules which define kinds of actions prohibited or required, which must serve as guides to the individual. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

Freedom can be preserved only if it is treated as a supreme principle which must not be sacrificed for particular advantages. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

F. A. Hayek is probably the most prominent advocate of capitalism in the present period. — Peter L. Berger

It is one of the great tragedies of our time that the masses have come to believe that they have reached their high standard of material welfare as a result of having pulled down the wealthy, and to fear that the preservation or emergence of such a class would deprive them of something they would otherwise get and which they regard as their due. — Friedrich Hayek

We must show that liberty is not merely one particular value but that it is the source and condition of most moral values. What a free society offers to the individual is much more than what he would be able to do if only he were free. We can therefore not fully appreciate the value of freedom until we know how a society of free men as a whole differs from one in which unfreedom prevails. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

I believe that change keeps you young. — Salma Hayek

The progress of the natural sciences in modern times has of course so much exceeded all expectations that any suggestion that there may be some limits to it is bound to arouse suspicion. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

Every woman who thinks she is the only victim of violence has to know that there are many more. — Salma Hayek

I have come to feel strongly that the greatest service I can still render to my fellow men would be that I could make the speakers and writers among them thoroughly ashamed ever again to employ the term social justice. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

I'm concerned about my daughter because she will not believe in Santa Claus. No matter what I say to her, she just doesn't buy it, and she's 2. I refuse to give it up. I say, 'There is a Santa Claus,' and she says, 'Okay, Mommy. In pretend world, right?' She really doesn't believe. — Salma Hayek

The case for individual freedom rests chiefly on the recognition of the inevitable and universal ignorance of all of us concerning a great many of the factors on which the achievement of our ends and welfare depend. It is because every individual knows so little and, in particular, because we rarely know which of us knows best that we trust the independent and competitive efforts of many to induce the emergence of what we shall want when we see it. Humiliating to human pride as it may be, we must recognize that the advance and even the preservation of civilization are dependent upon a maximum of opportunity for accidents to happen. — Friedrich Hayek

If you're paralyzing your face in your 20s and 30s, you're not exercising the muscles that give it strength. My feeling is, laugh, cry, move your face. — Salma Hayek

The thought of somebody pulling and cutting around my face gives me stomach ache. Plastic surgery would be so painful. What if it doesn't look good? What if they made a mistake? I couldn't do it. — Salma Hayek

I'm saving my sick days for when I'm feeling better. — Salma Hayek

We can either have a free Parliament or a free people. Personal freedom requires that all authority is restrained by long-run principles which the opinion of the people approves. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

Law in its ideal form might be described as a 'once-and-for-all' command that is directed to unknown people and that is abstracted from all particular circumstances of time and place and refers only to such conditions as may occur anywhere and at any time. — Friedrich A. Hayek

We shall all be the gainers if we can create a world fit for small states to live in. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

Few are ready to recognize that the rise of fascism and naziism was not a reaction against the socialist trends of the preceding period but a necessary outcome of those tendencies. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

As is true with respect to other great evils, the measures by which war might be made altogether impossible for the future may well be worse than even war itself. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

[T]hose who are willing to surrender their freedom for security have always demanded that if they give up their full freedom it should also be taken from those not prepared to do so. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

When we, in the communist countries, came across the ideas of Hayek and Aron, we had no problems to understand their importance. They gave us the much needed explanation of the somewhat peculiar prominence of intellectuals in our own society of that time. Our intellectuals, of course, did not like to hear it and did not want to recognize it because their peculiar prominence coexisted with the very debilitating absence of intellectual freedom, which the intellectuals value very highly. — Vaclav Klaus

There is no figure who had more of an influence, no person had more of an influence on the intellectuals behind the Iron Curtain than Friedrich Hayek. His books were translated and published by the underground and black market editions, read widely, and undoubtedly influenced the climate of opinion that ultimately brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union. — Milton Friedman

In the first place, it's surreal to watch filming, to see the little ideas you had in your head and now Taylor Kitsch is doing it, or Salma Hayek. And then to see it loud and bright onscreen is a trip. — Don Winslow

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 August Von Hayek

Intellects whose desires have outstripped their understanding. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

If this is the degree of inflation planned for in advance, the real outcome is indeed likely to be such that most of those who will retire at the end of the century will be dependent on the charity of the younger generation. And ultimately not morals but the fact that the young supply the police and the army will decide the issue: concentration camps for the aged unable to maintain themselves are likely to be the fate of an old generation whose income is entirely dependent on coercing the young. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

The views of intellectuals influence the politics of tomorrow ... What to the contemporary observer appears as the battle of conflicting interests has indeed often been described long before in a clash of ideas confined to narrow circles. — Friedrich Hayek

The Germans would appear as the disturbers of peace, as they already do to some people, merely because they were the first to take the path along which all the others were ultimately to follow. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

They offered me that film before I did Frida and I said, no, I'm not capable of directing. Then after seeing Julie direct, I was inspired by it. She motivated me to do it, because we don't have role models as woman for directors. — Salma Hayek

The fall of the Berlin Wall did more for the progress of freedom than all of the books written by myself or Friedrich Hayek or others. — Milton Friedman

The mind can never foresee its own advance — Friedrich A. Hayek

'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

I was privileged to grow up in Mexico at a time when you could play in the streets. We lived not too far from the ocean, and we would be outside all the time with the neighbours' kids, running free. What better place could there be for a child? — Salma Hayek

There can be little doubt that man owes some of his greatest successes in the past to the fact that he has not been able to control social life. His continued advance may well depend on his deliberately refraining from exercising controls which are now in his power. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

We can unfortunately not indefinitely extend the sphere of common action and still leave the individual free in his own sphere. Once the communal sector, in which the state controls all the means, exceeds a certain proportion of the whole, the effects of its actions dominate the whole system. Although the state controls directly the use of only a large part of the available resources, the effects of its decisions on the remaining part of the economic system become so great that indirectly it controls almost everything. — Friedrich Hayek

Whenever it is necessary that one of several conflicting opinions should prevail and when one would have to be made to prevail by force if need be, it is less wasteful to determine which has the stronger support by counting numbers than by fighting. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

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; and with its traditionalistic, anti-intellectual, and often mystical propensities it will never, except in short periods of disillusionment, appeal to the young and all those others who believe that some changes are desirable if this world is to become a better place. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

I'm a natural blonde. But when I started acting, I would go to auditions and they didn't know where to put me because I was voluptuous and had the accent, but I had blonde hair. It was ignorance: they thought every Latin person looks like Salma Hayek. — Sofia Vergara

If freedom is to flourish the philosophic foundations of a free society must be kept a living intellectual issue and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of the liveliest minds. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

I realize now that I've hoped to be great - as an actress, as a mother - because I want to embody the greatness of women who didn't get to be all they could have been. Their dignity, their courage, and their brilliance make me strive to be better. They're a part of me. — Salma Hayek

There is no answer in the available literature to the question why a government monopoly of the provision of money is universally regarded as indispensable ... It has the defects of all monopolies. — Friedrich Hayek

Make yourself smell nice. I even wear perfume sometimes when I'm alone. — Salma Hayek

Beauty products always cheer me up and give me hope. If it makes you feel pretty, why not? — Salma Hayek

Each member of society can have only a small fraction of the knowledge possessed by all, and ... each is therefore ignorant of most of the facts on which the working of society rests ... civilization rests on the fact that we all benefit from knowledge which we do not possess. And one of the ways in which civilization helps us to overcome that limitation on the extent of individual knowledge is by conquering intelligence, not by the acquisition of more knowledge, but by the utilization of knowledge which is and which remains widely dispersed among individuals. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

You can be a thousand different women. It's your choice which one you want to be. It's about freedom and sovereignty. You celebrate who you are. You say, 'This is my kingdom.' — Salma Hayek

Science thus tends necessarily towards an ultimate state in which all knowledge is embodied in the definitions of the objects with which it is concerned; and in which all true statements about these objects are therefore analytical or tautological and could not be disproved by any experience. The observation that any object did not behave as it should could then only mean that it was not an object of the kind it was thought to be. — Friedrich A. Hayek

The credit which the apparent conformity with recognized scientific standards can gain for seemingly simple but false theories may, as the present instance shows, have grave consequences. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

I keep waiting to meet a man who has more balls than I do. — Salma Hayek

I became obsessed with all these women who die never feeling they did anything extraordinary with their lives. — Salma Hayek

Once wide coercive powers are given to governmental agencies for particular purposes, such powers cannot be effectively controlled by democratic assemblies. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

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

For me, I have to say that I like to work a lot too, but I like not working better. The perfect scenario is when you just worked and you know something's coming up, then you have four, five, six months off. But you know you're going to have a job later. — Salma Hayek

We shall not grow wiser before we learn that much that we have done was very foolish. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

Being a mother is more exhausting than working, and sometimes I push myself too hard and burn myself out. I can appreciate how exhausting it must be for women who have to do everything themselves all the time. — Salma Hayek

It would clearly not be an improvement to build all houses exactly alike in order to create a perfect market for houses, and the same is true of most other fields where differences between the individual products prevent competition from ever being perfect. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

I've never had anything done on my face. I've never had dermabrasion or peels or injections of any kind, nothing. — Salma Hayek

At least insofar as the rules providing for coercion are not aimed at me personally but are so framed as to apply equally to all people in similar circumstances, they are no different from any of the natural obstacles that affect my plans. — Friedrich A. Hayek

If you look at any other group of people suffering injustice, women are always in the worst situation within that group. — Salma Hayek

When it becomes dominated by a collectivist creed, democracy will inevitably destroy itself. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

The task of the political philosopher can only be to influence public opinion, not to organize people for action. He will do so effectively only if he is not concerned with what is now politically possible but consistently defends the "general principles which are always the same." In this sense I doubt whether there can be such a thing as a conservative political philosophy. Conservatism may often be a useful practical maxim, but it does not give us any guiding principles which can influence long-range developments. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

It may indeed prove to be far the most difficult and not the least important task for human reason rationally to comprehend its own limitations. It is essential for the growth of reason that as individuals we should bow to forces and obey principles which we cannot hope fully to understand, yet on which the advance and even the preservation of civilization depend. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

Everybody has a weakness. Mine is food. — Salma Hayek

When you are passionate about life, it keeps you young. Sometimes I wake up at 4:00 am just to see how my roses look. — Salma Hayek

Independence of mind or strength of character is rarely found among those who cannot be confident that they will make their way by their own effort ... Indeed, when security is understood in too absolute a sense, the general striving for it, far from increasing the chances of freedom, becomes the greatest threat to it. — Friedrich August Von Hayek