A Quote by Friedrich August von Hayek

Least of all shall we preserve democracy or foster its growth if all the power and most of the important decisions rest with an organization far too big for the common man to survey or comprehend.

Friedrich August von Hayek

Quote Author

Friedrich August von Hayek
Austrian - Economist
May 8, 1899 - March 23, 1992

Most of us think that decisions such as where shall I live, with whom shall I partner, what shall I pick as a career for my life are the most important decisions that we make. But from the point of view of the universe these decisions are not that important. Within you, you have already made decisions about who you are, what the universe is and how you will relate to other people and how you will relate to the universe and these decisions are creating consequences in your life moment by moment.

Gary Zukav

It may indeed prove to be far the most difficult and not the least important task for human reason rationally to comprehend its own limitations. It is essential for the growth of reason that as individuals we should bow to forces and obey principles which we cannot hope fully to understand, yet on which the advance and even the preservation of civilization depend.

Friedrich August von Hayek

The Jesuits are a MILITARY organization, not a religious order. Their chief is a general of an army, not the mere father abbot of a monastery. And the aim of this organization is power - power in its most despotic exercise - absolute power, universal power, power to control the world by the volition of a single man. Jesuitism is the most absolute of despotisms - and at the same time the greatest and most enormous of abuses.

Napoleon Bonaparte

If it be true that democracy is based upon the assumption that every man shall serve his fellow man, the organization of democracy should be gradually adapted to that assumption.

Herbert Croly

In a democracy, voting is a huge and most important right of a common man.

Pankaj Tripathi

You are a free man, and let no organization come between you and your best interests. Do not let any man, or any body of men, tell you where you shall work, or where you shall not work, when you shall work, or when, you shall not work. If a man wants to belong to a labor organization, let him belong. If he does not want to belong to a labor organization, let him have perfect liberty to stay out. You own yourself. Let no man put a manacle on your hand, or foot, or head, or heart.

Thomas De Witt Talmage

The leading student of business propaganda, Australian social scientist Alex Carey, argues persuasively that “the 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.

Noam Chomsky

The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance. The growth of democracy; the growth of corporate power; and the growth of corporate propaganda against democracy.

Alex Carey

The most popular man under a democracy is not the most democratic man, but the most despotic man. The common folk delight in the exactions of such a man. They like him to boss them. Their natural gait is the goose step.

H. L. Mencken

You shall not pile, with servile toil, Your monuments upon my breast, Nor yet within the common soil Lay down the wreck of power to rest, Where man can boast that he has trod On him that was "the scourge of God."

Edward Everett Hale

For power can guarantee the interests of some men but it can never foster the good of man. Power always protects the good of some at the expense of all the others. Only love can attain and preserve the good of all. Any claim to build the security of all on force is a manifest imposture.

Thomas Merton

When you are a man of power, your decisions affect so many people and sometimes it can appear to be extremely evil, when really you just have a specific goal to reach. I had to understand that state of mind because what was most important was the bigger goal not the smaller decisions.

Jimmy Jean-Louis

If we don't preserve the oceans from nitrate runoff and plastic and chemicals, and if we don't preserve it from acidification, and if we don't preserve it from grotesque overfishing - too much money chasing too few fish - we're going to have the most massive ecosystem on the planet in peril.

John F. Kerry

Our experience shows - and survey after survey reveals - institutions are run better, communities are healthier when women are involved in solving the challenges of our society. Equal representation does not just lead to good democracy: it is democracy.

Cherie Blair

The two most potent post-war orthodoxies--socialist politics and modernist art--have at least one feature in common: they are bothforms of snobbery, the anti-bourgeois snobbery of people convinced of their right to dictate to the common man in the name of the common man.