Friedrich Hayek

Austrian and British economist (1899–1992)

Fame68.5
Momentum0.0
Austria rank#38

Source-basedFalling

Fame68.5
Momentum0.0
Austria rank#38
Academics rank#180
Wikipedia50.9K

Lived 1899–1992, aged 93Austria

Austria

AcademicsAcademic

Wikipedia
84 languages
Cross-language footprint
Rank in Austria
#38
Academics
Era
1899–1992
Aged 93
Known for
Laboratory Greece
2019

Summary

Updated 2026-06-21

He won a Nobel for showing how prices think — aggregating scattered knowledge across millions of strangers without anyone being in charge. That insight made Hayek the intellectual architect of free-market arguments in the late 20th century, and The Road to Serfdom the handbook.

Biography

About

Friedrich August von Hayek fought in World War I as a teenager, and the wreckage pulled him toward economics — he wanted to understand what had gone so wrong. He earned doctorates in law and political studies in Vienna in the early 1920s, then moved through Austria, Britain, and the United States, teaching at the London School of Economics and the University of Chicago. In 1944 he published The Road to Serfdom, a warning about centralized planning that became his most widely read work and has stayed in print for eight decades. Thirty years later he shared the 1974 Nobel in economics with Gunna…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Friedrich Hayek

Friedrich Hayek

saidJul 1992

I've always doubted that the socialists had a leg to stand on intellectually.

— Interview with Thomas W. Hazlett in May of 1977, as published in "The Road to Serfdom, Forseeing the Fall", in Reason magazine (July 1992)

Friedrich Hayek

said28 Jul 1977

What is at issue is not union membership but compulsory union membership and not the right to strike but the right to compel others to strike.

— Letter (28 July 1977) printed in The Times (2 August 1977), p. 11

Friedrich Hayek

said22 Jun 1975

Perhaps I'm unrealistic. As long as people do not fully realize the danger of inflation, they may well pressure for more inflation as a short-term remedy for evils.

— Interview on "Meet the Press" (22 June 1975)

Friedrich Hayek

said22 Jun 1975

The sentence, 'stopping the printing presses,' is a figurative expression, because it is being done now by creating credit by the Federal Reserve System.

— Interview on "Meet the Press" (22 June 1975)

Friedrich Hayek

saidFeb 1975