Friedrich August von Hayek
In 1974, Friedrich August von Hayek received the Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, one of the most prominent recognitions of his career as an economist, philosopher, and political scientist.
Born on 8 May 1899 in Vienna, Hayek was an Austrian and later British citizen who studied at the University of Vienna. He worked as a university teacher and wrote in both German and English across a career that spanned decades and several disciplines, including economics, philosophy, history, and political science. Among his authored works are The Road to Serfdom, The Constitution of Liberty, Law, Legislation and Liberty, and The Fatal Conceit. He died on 23 March 1992 in Freiburg im Breisgau.
Over the course of his life Hayek accumulated a considerable range of honours. He was elected a Fellow of the Econometric Society and a Fellow of the British Academy, and he received a Guggenheim Fellowship. He was made a Companion of Honour and was awarded the Pour le Mérite, the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art, the Hanns Martin Schleyer Prize, the Order of Merit of Baden-Württemberg, and the Ring of Honour of the City of Vienna. An honorary doctorate from Salzburg University and the Presidential Medal of Freedom were also among his awards. That last honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, stands as one of the few civilian distinctions awarded to him by the United States government.
Quotes by Friedrich August von Hayek
Friedrich August von Hayek's insights on:
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.
It used to be the boast of free men that, so long as they kept within the bounds of the known law, there was no need to ask anybody’s permission or to obey anybody’s orders. It is doubtful whether any of us can make this claim today.
To discover the meaning of what is called “social justice” has been one of my chief preoccupations for more than 10 years. I have failed in this endeavour or rather, have reached the conclusion that, with reference to society of free men, the phrase has no meaning whatever.
The idea that human kind can shape the world according to wish is what I call the fatal conceit.
All political theories assume, of course, that most individuals are very ignorant. Those who plead for liberty differ from the rest in that they include among the ignorant themselves as well as the wisest.
Wherever liberty as we understand it has been destroyed, this has almost always been done in the name of some new freedom promised to the people.
I was quite depressed two weeks ago when I spent an afternoon at Brentano’s Bookshop in New York and was looking at the kind of books most people read. Once you see that you lose all hope.
Once you admit that the individual is merely a means to serve the ends of the higher entity called society or the nation, most of those features of totalitarianism which horrify us follow of necessity.
Unlike the position that exists in the physical sciences, in economics and other disciplines that deal with essentially complex phenomena, the aspects of the events to be accounted for about which we can get quantitative data are necessarily limited and may not include the important ones.