F.A. Hayek
Friedrich August von Hayek CH was an Austrian and British economist and philosopher known for his defense of classical liberalism and free-market capitalism against socialist and collectivist thought. He is considered by some to be one of the most important economists and political philosophers of the twentieth century. Hayek's account of how changing prices communicate signals which enable individuals to coordinate their plans is widely regarded as an important achievement in economics. Hayek also wrote on the topics of jurisprudence, neuroscience and the history of ideas.
Hayek is one of the most influential members of the Austrian School of economics, and in 1974 shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics with Gunnar Myrdal "for their pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and for their penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena." He also received the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991 from president George H. W. Bush.
Hayek lived in Austria, Great Britain, the United States and Germany, and became a British subject in 1938.
“I am certain, however, that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.”
“The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposedbeauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on toestablish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices whichmay oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as thehand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no otherprinciple of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, everysingle piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impressupon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily andharmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably,and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.”