While it would be an exaggeration, it would not be altogether untrue to say that the interpretation of the fundamental principle of liberalism as absence of state activity (rather than as a policy which deliberately adopts competition, the market, and prices as its ordering principle and uses the legal framework enforced by the state in order to make competition as effective and beneficial as possible – and to supplement it where, and only where, it cannot be made effective) is as much responsible for the decline of competition as the active support which governments have given directly and indirectly to the growth of monopoly.
— F.A. Hayek, “Free” Enterprise and Competitive Order (Presentation in April 1947 at the founding meeting of the Mont Pèlerin Society), reprinted in: Individualism and Economic Order, Chicago, pp. 107-118. Found in the superb paper Hayek as Ordo-Liberal by Stefan Kolev [pdf]. Yes, it is one sentence.
