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Socialism has taught many people that they possess claims irrespective of performance, irrespective of participation. In the light of the morals that produced the extended order of civilisation, socialists in fact incite people to break the law.

— Friedrich Hayek The Fatal Conceit (1988)

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Socialism

More quotes by Friedrich Hayek

We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage.

The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (1988)

What a free society offers to the individual is much more than what he would be able to do if only he were free.

The Constitution of Liberty (1960)

The more the state "plans" the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.

The Road to Serfdom (1944)

Justice, like liberty and coercion, is a concept which, for the sake of clarity, ought to be confined to the deliberate treatment of men by other men.

The Constitution of Liberty (1960)

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Democracy is the wholesome and pure air without which a socialist public organization cannot live a full-blooded life.

Mikhail Gorbachev

Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God's children.

Martin Luther King Jr.

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

Winston Churchill

In my opinion, nothing has contributed so much to the corruption of the original idea of socialism as the belief that Russia is a socialist country and that every act of its rulers must be excused, if not imitated.

George Orwell

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Friedrich Hayek (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.