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… is from page 48 of the 2007 Definitive Edition (Bruce Caldwell, ed.) of F.A. Hayek’s classic 1944 volume, The Road to Serfdom [2]; specifically, it’s from Hayek’s Foreword to the 1956 American paperback edition:
The important point is that the political ideals of a people and its attitude toward authority are as much the effect as the cause of the political institutions under which it lives. This means, among other things, that even a strong tradition of political liberty is no safeguard if the danger is precisely that the new institutions and policies will gradually undermine and destroy that spirit.
Hayek [3] died 21 years ago today, less than seven weeks short of his 93rd birthday.