Quotes Library

January 16, 2025

[On Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom] A plan to resist all planning may be better than its opposite, but it belongs to the same style of politics.

Michael Oakshott, (1901-1991), British academic, Rationalism in Politics (1962), Jay p.276

Think of a situation in which you would insist on a plan before proceeding (e.g., an all-too-brief holiday abroad), and one where you would resist any sort of planning on your behalf (e.g., being told you have been assigned by your employer to your seventh choice of the firm’s many worldwide branch offices). Do your answers tell you anything about yourself?

Friedrich Hayek, Ayn Rand and few others represent the sector of the right wing to whom planning by more than one person constitutes state socialism.


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