"That socialism has displaced liberalism as the doctrine held by the great majority of progressives does not simply mean that people had forgotten the warnings of the great liberal thinkers of the past about the consequences of collectivism. It has happened because they were persuaded of the very opposite of what these men had predicted. The extraordinary thing is that the same socialism that was not only early recognized as the gravest threat to freedom, but quite openly began as a reaction against the liberalism of the French Revolution, gained general acceptance under the flag of liberty."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Serfdom
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Related Quotes
"We have been misled as much because we have refused to believe that the enemy was sincere in the profession of some b…"
"When a professional student of social affairs writes a political book, his first duty is plainly to say so. This is a…"
"Conservatism, though a necessary element in any stable society, is not a social program; in its paternalistic, nation…"
"The reader will probably ask whether this means that I am still prepared to defend all the main conclusions of this b…"
"I have long resented being more widely known by what I regarded as a pamphlet for the time than by my strictly scient…"
"While history runs its course, it is not history to us. It leads us into an unknown land, and but rarely can we get a…"
"If in the long run we are the makers of our own fate, in the short run we are the captives of the ideas we have creat…"
"For at least twenty-five years before the specter of totalitarianism became a real threat, we had progressively been …"
"The gradual transformation of a rigidly organized hierarchic system into one where men could at least attempt to shap…"
"Is there a greater tragedy imaginable than that, in our endeavour consciously to shape our future in accordance with …"