Methods

Before we can even ask how things might go wrong, we must first explain how they could ever go right.

F.A. Hayek (unsourced, Taken from a 2010 lecture at the Mises Instittue)

Monopolists

... if we face a monopolist we are at his mercy.  And an authority directing the whole economic system would be the most powerful monopolist conceivable.

 F.A. Hayek (Road to Serfdom, 1944)

Masters of Society

Those who argue that we have to an astounding degree learned to master the forces of nature but are sadly behind in making successful use of the possibilities of social collaboration are quite right so far as this statement goes.  But they are mistaken when they carry the comparison further and argue that we must learn to master the forces of society in the same manner in which we have learned to maser the forces of nature.  This is not only the path to totalitarianism but the path to the destruction of our civilization and a certain way to block future progress.

F.A. Hayek (Road to Serfdom, 1944)

Preventing Evil with Evil

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

F.A. Hayek (1944, Road to Serfdom)

On Planning

In a small community common views on the relative importance of the main tasks, agreed standards of value, will exist on a great many subjects.  But their number will become less and less the wider we throw the net; and, as there is less community of views, the necessity to rely on force and coercion increases.

 F.A. Hayek (1944, Road to Serfdom)

"Regulation" and Exploitation

There has never been a worse and more cruel exploitation of one class by another than that of the weaker or less fortunate members of a group of producers by the well-established which has been made possible by the "regulation" of competition.

F.A. Hayek (1944, Road to Serfdom)

Security, Liberty and Force

...those 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.

 F.A. Hayek (1944, Road to Serfdom)

Wealth and Power

And who will deny that a world in which the wealthy are powerful is still a better world than one in which only the already powerful can acquire wealth?

F.A. Hayek (1944, Road to Serfdom)

Potential Plenty

The reader may take it that whoever talks about potential plenty is either dishonest or does not know what he is talking about.

 F.A. Hayek (1944, Road to Serfdom)

Planners 3

The hopes [planners] place in planning, however, are the result not of a comprehensive view of society but rather of a very limited view and often the result of a great exaggeration of the importance of the ends they place foremost.

F.A. Hayek (1944, Road to Serfdom)

Planners 2

...while planning is in the main still an ambition, it unites almost all the single-minded idealists, all the men and women who have devoted their lives to a single task.

F.A. Hayek (1944, Road to Serfdom)

Planners

...it is worth inquiring why so large a proportion of the technical experts should be found in the front rank of planners. The explanation of this phenomenon is closely connected with an important fact which the critics of the planners should always keep in mind: that there is little question that almost every one of the technical ideals of our experts could be realized within a comparatively short time if to achieve them were made the sole aim of humanity.

F.A. Hayek (1944, Road to Serfdom)

The New Freedom

The subtle change in meaning to which the word "freedom" was subjected in order that this argument should sound plausible is important.  To the great apostles of political freedom the word had meant freedom from coercion, freedom from the arbitrary power of other men, release from the ties which left the individual no choice but obedience to the orders of a superior to whom he was attached.  The new freedom promised, however, was to be a freedom from necessity, release from the compulsion of the circumstances which inevitably limit the range of choice of all of us, although for some very much more than for others.  Before man could be truly free, the "despotism of physical want" had to be broken, the "restrains of the economic system" relaxed.

F.A. Hayek (1944, Road to Serfdom)

Attitude of the liberal

The attitude of the liberal toward society is like that of the gardener who tends a plant and, in order to create the conditions most favorable to its growth, must know as much as possible about its structure and the way it functions.  

F.A. Hayek (1944, The Road to Serfdom)