A Quote by Friedrich August von Hayek
By giving the government unlimited powers, the most arbitrary rule can be made legal; and in this way a democracy may set up the most complete despotism imaginable.
Related Quotes
It is not because a part of the government is elective, that makes it less a despotism, if the persons so elected, possess afterwards, as a parliament, unlimited powers. Election, in this case, becomes separated from representation, and the candidates are candidates for despotism.
President Trump and his administration have made an intensive effort to roll back President Obama's big-government regulations, the worst of which was the Waters of the United States rule. That rule was the poster child for overreaching bureaucrats giving the federal government far-reaching powers over individual landowners.
Our Press and our schools cultivate Chauvinism, militarism, dogmatism, conformism and ignorance. The arbitrary power of the Government is unlimited, and unexampled in history; freedom of the Press, of opinion and of movement are as thoroughly exterminated as though the proclamation of the Rights of Man had never been. We have built up the most gigantic police apparatus, with informers made a national institution, and the most refined scientific system of political and mental torture. We whip the groaning masses of the country towards a theoretical future happiness, which only we can.
Perhaps the most important thing I learned was about democracy, that democracy is not our government, our constitution, our legal structure. Too often they are enemies of democracy.
With the tools of democracy, democracy was murdered and lawlessness made "legal." Raw power ruled, and its only real goal was to destroy all other powers besides itself.
An elective despotism was not the government we fought for, but one which should not only be founded on true free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among general bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.
[O]ur sages in the great [constitutional] convention... intended our government should be a republic which differs more widely from a democracy than a democracy from a despotism. The rigours of a despotism often... oppress only a few, but it is the very essence and nature of a democracy, for a faction claiming to oppress a minority, and that minority the chief owners of the property and truest lovers of their country.
Hindsight is the most dangerous thing imaginable for me. I imagine that's the case for most filmmakers. And I would love to be a filmmaker who was an exception to that rule, but I'm certainly not.
But there is much to be said for giving up ... grand ambitions and living the most ordinary life imaginable.
For any young democracy, the most difficult but important step is burying the legacy of tyranny and establishing an economy and a government and institutions that abide by the rule of law. Every country faces challenges to the rule of law, including my own.
Any government, that is its own judge of, and determines authoritatively for the people, what are its own powers over the people, is an absolute government of course. It has all the powers that it chooses to exercise. There is no other or at least no more accurate definition of a despotism than this.
If the means to which the government of the union may resort for executing the power confided to it, are unlimited, it may easily select such as will impair or destroy the powers confided to the state governments.
[the framers of the Constitution] intended our government should be a republic, which differs more widely from a democracy than a democracy from a despotism.
Democracy is the worst form of government. It is the most inefficient, the most clumsy, the most unpractical.... It reduces wisdom to impotence and secures the triumph of folly, ignorance, clap-trap, and demagogy.... Yet democracy is the only form of social order that is admissible, because it is the only one consistent with justice.
I am a mortal enemy to arbitrary government and unlimited power.
Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights; it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims. When unlimited and unrestricted by individual rights, a government is man's deadliest enemy. It is not as protection against private actions, but against governmental actions that the Bill of Rights was written.
Related Authors
Adam Smith Quotes
Scottish
Economist
Alan Greenspan Quotes
American
Economist
Benjamin Graham Quotes
American
Economist
John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes
American
Economist
John Maynard Keynes Quotes
English
Economist
Joseph Stiglitz Quotes
American
Economist
Ludwig von Mises Quotes
Austrian
Economist
Milton Friedman Quotes
American
Economist
Muhammad Yunus Quotes
Bangladeshi
Economist
Murray Rothbard Quotes
American
Economist
Paul Craig Roberts Quotes
American
Economist
Paul Krugman Quotes
American
Economist
Richard Thaler Quotes
American
Economist
Robert Reich Quotes
American
Economist
Thomas Sowell Quotes
American
Economist
Walter E. Williams Quotes
American
Economist