If we were to make no better use of victory than to countenance existing trends in this direction, … - Friedrich August von Hayek

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When I'm in management meetings when we're deciding my future, those decisions are left up to me. I'm the one who has to go out and fulfill all these obligations, so I should be able to choose which ones I do or not. That's the part of my life where I feel most in control.

Friedrich August von Hayek

If we were to make no better use of victory than to countenance existing trends in this direction, only too visible before 1939, we might indeed find that we have defeated National Socialism merely to create a world of many national socialisms, differing in detail, but all equally totalitarian, nationalistic, and in recurrent conflict with each other.

Countenance, Defeated, Details, Totalitarian, Use, Victory

Same Author Quotes

Money is one of the greatest instruments of freedom ever invented by man. It is money which in existing society opens an astounding range of choice to the poor man, a range greater than that which not many generations ago was open to the wealthy

Choices, Generations, Greater, Instruments, Men, Society

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

Ends, Horrify, Individual, Mean, Merely, Nation

There is nothing in the basic principles of liberalism to make it a stationary creed; there are no hard-and-fast rules fixed once and for all. . . . Probably nothing has done so much harm to the liberal cause as the wooden insistence of some liberals on certain rules of thumb, above all the principle of laissez faire.

Creed, Done, Harm, Principles, Thumbs

That there is little hope of international order or lasting peace so long as every country is free to employ whatever measures it thinks desirable in its own immediate interest, however damaging they may be to others, needs little emphasis now.

Country, Desirable, Emphasis, Needs, Order, Thinking

Democracy is essentially a means, a utilitarian device for safeguarding internal peace and individual freedom. As such it is by no means infallible or certain. Nor must we forget that there has often been much more cultural and spiritual freedom under an autocratic rule than under some democracies and it is at least conceivable that under the government of a very homogeneous and doctrinaire majority democratic government might be as oppressive as the worst dictatorship.

Democracy, Government, Internal, Mean, Spiritual, Utilitarian